LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Sl^ap ©ojuiriglt !f n- 

Shelf..X..lZ 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



1MW»I 







THE 

STRUGGLE FOR BREAD: 

> AN IMPARTIAL DISCUSSIOK 

OF 

Some op the Wroiss ani Rights of Capital ahd Labor, 

TOGETHER WITH 

An Analysis of Industrial Depressions as Related to the 
Present Railway System. 



A Glance AT Co OPERATIVE Profit-Sharing, an Analy- 
sis OF Henry George's Land Fallacies, with 
Thoughts on Socialism and the Future 
OF Labor, Containing Notes and 
Tables on the Social Condi- 
tion OF the People. 



BY LEIGH H. 'iRVINE, 
Author of "The Iron Highway" and "Labor Problems. 



PUBLLSHEBS: 
THE MORNING TIMES COMPANY, 

OAKLAND. 

THE SAN FRANCISCO NEWS COMPANY, 

SAN FRANCISCO. 



V: 









Copyrighted, 1889. 
By LEIGH H. IRVINE. 



All Rights Reserved. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



[See Alphabetical Index at End of Book.] 

Chapter. Paqb. 

I. Barons and Barefeet, ... 7 

II. The Struggle for Wealth, - - 25 

III. The Railway Problem, - - - 47 

IV. Private Ownership of Land, - 74 
V. Revolutionary Theories, - - - 96 

VI. Modern Trusts, . . - . 108 

VII. The Future of Labor, - - - 116 

Vlir. Unions and Profit-Sharing, - 130 

Appendix, 153 



PREFACE. 



The facts and figures presented to the reader in this 
little volume belong to everybody. It would be as 
foolish, therefore, for me to call a great part of the book 
original, as for the compiler of an arithmetic to call 
the multiplication table his own invention. 

I have simply stated somewell-known truths in a 
popular way, for I do not pretend to be a specialist in 
the field of economics and social science. I believe 
that workingmen in overalls should know just such 
things as are here prepared for their information. 
The business man as well as the careful student will 
find, in the notes and throughout the text, many sta- 
tistics which are invaluable in the study of the so- 
called labor problem. The form of the book makes 
it specially convenient for pers .ns who want a manual 
of reference in public speaking. I cannot close with- 
out again emphasizing the importance of the notes. 
The student should not omit to read them. Sincerely, 

Leigh H. Irvine. 



CHAPTER I. 
BARONS AND BAREFEET. 

INXRODUCXION. 

Are the Evils Imaginary ? — Thr Past — Increased 
Cost OF Living— Is there Work for all?— In- 
dustrial Depressions Defined — Hard Times in 
THE United States in 1S37, 1847, 1857, 1867, 1873, 
to 1878, AND 1882 to 1887—1,000,000 Idle People 
IN 1885 — At the Threshold of the Problem. 

The American Republic stands alone 
in one respect in the world's history. 
Nowhere has the right of free discussion 
of public questions been carried to the ex- 
tent which it has among us. Here we 
are free to peaceably express our views at 
all times on men and measures, subject 
always to the law against libel and slan- 
der. From the country debating school 
to the workingmen's union and the politi- 
cal meeting, there may be found every 
grade of opinion. It is in the spirit of seri- 
ous inquiry that these pages are written. 
I have no wish to abuse that liberty 

(7) 



8 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

which extends to me the right to discuss 
pubUc questions, but my whole desire is 
to present the truth in so far as it lies in 
my power so to do. 

At the threshold it may be asked what 
are the social and economic questions that 
demand solution? Do the strikes and 
lockouts, the riots, mobs, and industrial 
depressions" indicate such deep-rooted dis- 
content as presages a bloody strife be- 
tween capital and labor? Is it necessary 
to attack the foundations of our Govern- 
ment to reach industrial peace and safety, 
or have Ave under the present system 
such resources and remedies as will reach 
the evil? 

These are some of the problems de- 
manding solution. It is necessary to sur- 
vey the signs of the times. At the outset, 
it will not do to make rash assumptions on 
either side, or to charge all of our evils to 
the foreigners in crowded centers who have 
often encouraged discontent and strikes. 
It would be unsafe to say that the masses 
of the people are steadily going down, 



BARONS AND BAREFEET. \) 

that the entire poor population is drifting 
to ruin. So it would be equal folly to deny 
the growth of trusts and other evils of 
monopoly, for the people's complaints 
against them can no longer be pushed 
aside with insolence and answered with a 
laugh.* Thure is on the other hand a 

* In the catalogue of modern evils not the least 
harmful is the growth of Nationalism and other forms 
of Socialism, whose inevitable result would be the 
overthrow of individuality, and the despotism of gov- 
ernment so admirably portrayed by Herbert Spencer. 
These creeds appeal to the ignorant masses on the one 
side and to theoretical enthusiasts on tht other. 
In an age when the wrongs of monopoly are numerous, 
and when the rights of individuals are often curtailed 
by corrupt combinations of the money-power, the seeds 
of Socialism readily take root. 

The rapid growth of this country and the enormous 
aggregation of coloss-d fortunes have overthrown old 
methods. The present is an era so different from the 
provincial period in which our ancestors lived, that 
the oft-heard comparison of "old times" and "old 
wages " with the present can no longer be maintained. 
The catalogue of expenditures is enlarged on every 
side, while the production of wealth and its distribu- 
tion are wholly unlike anything in the past. 

I believe that the coolest thinkers admit that there 
are important social and economic questions now de- 



10 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

large class of people who like to speak of 
"the good old times of the long ago," as if 

manding thoughtful consideration, and questions, too, 
almost unknown in the old ages; but they cannot be 
solved in a day. Their settlement demands patient 
investigation, the best -wisdom of honest statesman- 
ship, and a constant regard for the rights of vested in- 
terests. E vils that attend this age of wonderful pro- 
duction, and that involve our social institutions as 
well as the culture and happiness of the. people, cannot 
be remedied by a sudden and sweeping revolution, for 
it is an old truth that remedial ju stice is as slow in 
growth and adaptation to existing conditions, as is 
the growth of the wrongs against which it is directed. 
In a republic such as ours there cannot arise the 
necessity for the subjugation of all wills to the one 
tyrant will of sovereignty, for that is the relationship 
of master and slave. This new Nationalism is but an- 
other name for old Socialism, and it would destroy the 
incentives of the noblest men. It would rob individ- 
uals of their motives and paralyze the vast enterprises 
born of the spirit of venture and individual investiga- 
tion. 

Denison, an English observer and worker, incis- 
ively remarks that no ballot, nor manhood suffrage, 
nor confiscation of property, will ever make an igno- 
rant man the equal of an educated man. No political 
dodge can reverse the decrees of nature; no municip il 
law can abrogate the supremacy of mind, nor deliver 
brute matter from its eternal subjection to it. 

In an address before the American Social Science 



BARONS AND BAREFEET. 11 

flesh and blood never sufiered the pangs of 
poverty and oppression in the past. They 
forget that a few centuries ago kings of 
the Old World did not live half so well 
as artisans of to-day. They do not re- 
Association at Saratoga, N. Y., in November, 1887, F. 
J. Kingsbury, of Waterbury, Vt., aptly said: " I am old 
enough to remember when our workingmen and work- 
ingwomen were our native-born population; when the 
manufacturer, if his credit was good enough, fre- 
quently borrowed his capital from the man whom he 
hired as a workman, who preferred his fixed days 
wages to the risks of business, but was very glad that 
some one else was willing to take that risk and to give 
him employment and interest for his money; when 
strikes and strikers would have been scouted with 
contempt; when the workman was a man or loornan, 
as the case might be, who had his own plans for the 
present and future, who lived in his own house and 
knew what to do with his mon ey. He had read in 
Poor Richard's Almanac, 'Spend one penny less 
each day than thy clear gains,' and he saw the point 
of it. Where are those men now ? They and their 
sons are the capitalists, and financiers, and bankers, 
and merchants, and clergymen, and professors, and 
lawyers, and doctors of to day; and the women are 
their wives and mothers. And what had they that 
the present generation of laborers lack ? Only three 
things, and they are these: Industry, Honesty, 
Thrift." 



12 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

member that a hundred years ago fire, 
and light, and cooking conveniences, 
were ahnost unknown in America; that 
there was no gas or coal; that spinning 
and weaving, threshing and reaping, 
^vere unknown arts; that pine knots and 
tallow candles were fair representatives of 
the destitution and poverty of the times. 
In those old days they had their special 
forms of poverty, in our age we have ours. 
Civilization has left its train of evils, and 
while the masses are wealthier and wiser, 
longer-lived and liappier than ever before, 
it is doubtless true that there are points 
of contact in the struggle for bread where 
human life is lost, where the rudimentary 
instincts of barbarism crop out, and where 
men slaughter their fellows for the Al- 
mighty Dollar. It is in such instances 
that remedies are needed, for these evils 
give Socialism a leverage. They are the 
food upon which discontent and anarchy 
grow fat. 

Industrial depressions have afflicted us 
in America about every ten years since 



BARONS AND BAREFEET. 13 

1837. Some thinkers have held that the 
sudden multiplication of our wants (or 
necessaries) has overtaxed the people, and 
that the enormous production of varieties 
of food and clothing which were unknown 
in past ages has made the masses ex- 
travagant. It is true that the amassing 
of tremendous private fortunes and the 
growth of corporations have greatly in- 
creased the manufacture of old and new 
articles of consumption, and it seems rea- 
sonable to conclude that men's expendi- 
tures are larger than in provincial times; 
but statistics also show that their earnings 
are greater. Other causes than extrava- 
gance have always caused our industrial 
troubles. Extravagance usually affects 
the individual at home, rather than the 
people as a whole. 

The advocates of all plans for a refor- 
mation of existing abuses can agree that our 
age has no precedent in the annals of his- 
tory. All forms of wealth are produced 
as never before, and new forms of use and 
beauty are molded for man's comfort and 



14 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

convenience.* The country is no longer 
a wilderness, an expanse of separate and 
isolated localities, characterized by local 
customs and provincialisms, but it is a 
net-work of cities and towns, united by 
railways ever growing, over which "winged 
giants" transport passengers and freight 
at an enormous rate of speed. All of these 
American cities, villages, and agricultural 
communities, constitute a republic of 
markets and customs, which, more in- 
tensely than in the past, are permeated by 
a common spirit. A flash of the wires 
often determines the price of commodities, 
and the new conquests of inventive genius 
make obsolete the vocations of yesterday, or 
call new trades into being. We can order 
Parisian trousseaux b}'^ galvanic speech and 
have the luxuries of the world at our 
marriage feasts quicker than our simple 
forefathers could send their humble home- 



* The census of 1885 for the commonwealth of Mas- 
sachusetts seeks to show the divisions of labor that 
make the industrial features of this a^e. The classi- 
fication shows more than 20,000 designations. 



BARONS AND RAREFEET. 15 

spun across a half-dozen counties by ox 
team or i)ony express. The hixurious 
surroundings of our people and the 
existence of many comforts which have 
been made possible by science have ex- 
tended our lists of necessaries. The 
equipments demanded by moderately 
well-to-do classes would have been the 
height of extravagance a few generations 
ago. The citizen is called upon for larger 
expenditures than in the past, and prob- 
ably for more extensive outlays than the 
average earnings of our population will 
buy.* This is one frequent cause of com- 
plaint by the masses. They cannot have 
as many comforts as their wealthy friends, 
and with the increase of wealth around 
them they realize with chagrin that their 
incomes will not enable the purchase of 



*As W. D. Ho wells, the novelist has strikingly 
said in "Annie Kilburn," "No one was meant to work 
in a mill all his life. What the working people want 
is rest and what they need is decent homes where they 
can get it. " See Chapter VIII of this book where it 
is shown that labor is being emancipated gradually 
by the growth of machinery. 



16 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

many things which would add to their 
comfort or attract the attention of their 
neighbors. Men are, after all, much like 
children, ever jealous of others, whose 
toys they envy. Whether a top or anew 
horse and buggy, a doll or a bicycle, the 
spirit is one. 

Having cursorily reviewed some of the 
signs of the era and noted some of the minor 
grounds of complaint, let us now examine 
that definition of hard times which is 
often given by prosperous people, to wit: 
"Hard times is the constitutional laziness 
of idlers who growl because thrifty men 
become rich." The most limited ac- 
quaintance with history will show that 
there are times of real suffering by large 
masses of the people, and these periods of 
business failure and idleness of working- 
men are called industrial depressions. At 
such times industrious and trustworthy 
people often suffer while the authors of 
commercial crimes become rich. The 
stories of our statisticians, supplemented 
by the reports of commissioners of labor 



BARONS AND BAREFEET. 17 

throughout the Union are at times as pa- 
thetic as the pictures of Victor Hugo, in 
" Les Miserables." The " want " advertise- 
ments in the great daily newspapers, and 
the crowded employment bureaus from 
New York to San Francisco, are evidences 
that if there is work for all, there are 
often great and seemingly cruel inequali- 
ties in its distribution. 

Recent articles in the editorial columns 
of the New York Herald show that in re- 
sj^onse to one advertisement for a clerk, 
salesman, or mechanic, there have been 
three or four hundred letters from eager 
searchers for something to do. An ad- 
vertisement in the New York World for 
a steward, at a small salary, brought 
nearly three hundred replies. The San 
Francisco Examiner which has been a 
steadfast and powerful friend of wage 
workers under the management of Mr. 
W. R. Hearst, recently opened an em- 
ployment agency for the benefit of unem- 
ployed men and women, charging no fee 
to employer or employe. As a result its 
2 



18 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

bureau has been overrun with those eager 
to become bread winners, but it was im- 
possible to supply half the applicants with 
positions.* 

In his report for 1886, Charles F. Peck, 
labor commissioner of New York, says: " It 
would be an almost impossible task to ar- 
rive at the true number of unemployed, or 
even at a fair percentage, in a large city like 
Now York. No attempt was made to se- 
cure it. For the purposes of this report it 
was only deemed advisable to show the 
falsity of the almost universal opinion 
that there is work for all." 

But such facts are only repetitions of 
history. So long ago as 1817, Lord Brough- 
am pictured in fervid eloquence the in- 
dustrial depression then harassing En- 
gland, and he said: "We have known 
times of former suffering, but no man can 
find an example of anything like the pres- 

*The Examiner's bureau found positions for 650 ap- 
plicants the first two weeks of its existence and 
nearly 1,000 applicants still crowded its rooms. At 
the end of four months nearly 5,000 positions had been 
obtained for workmen at the bureau. 



BARONS AND BAREFEET. 19 

ent. There was great distress in 1812, yet 
compared with the wide-spread misery of 
to-day, other periods of distress rise into 
eras of actual prosperity." 

And yet the English hard times of 1817, 
severe as was the suffering, constitute but 
one instance in many eras that taxed the 
poor fund of that country as well as the 
wisdom of its statesmen.* Our own great 
industrial depressions date no further back 
than 1837, but since then they have re- 
curred regularly at intervals of ten years 
until 1873, when a siege of five years of 
universal industrial depression began 
which remains a dark spot in the mem- 
ory of many men now in business. From 
1878 to 1882 we had universal prosperity, 
but with 1882 began a repetition of the 
stagnation of 1873, which diminished in 
intensity in 1887-8. The foregoing facts 
belong to the history of the times, as seen 
in the reports of the United States Labor 

*For a vivid picture of the Eaglish poor a few gen- 
erations ago see Macaulay's History of England, Vol. 
1. See Thorold Roger'a *' Six Centuries of Work and 
Wages." 



20 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

Bureau ; but I have often been surprised 
to see sensible men put their memories 
and their Hmited individual experiences 
against the careful conclusions of scholars 
whose work is patient and whose results 
are supplemented and upheld by the re- 
searches of trained corps of fact-gatlierers 
in the statistical departments of the Gov- 
ernment. In questions that require wide 
generalizations, the limited observation of 
individuals is next to use^.ess. 

The current events of the times indicate 
tliat the conflict between labor and capital 
as the trouble of wage workers with em- 
ployers is usually called, is almost unceas- 
ing. In 188G, there were 1,900 strikes in 
the State of New York. There were 9,861 
firms in the strikes tliat occurred in the 
United States during the same year. In 
the strikes in the United States from 1880 
to 1887, inclusive, 22,304 establishments 
were involved, affecting 1,323,203 em- 
ployes. During the same years there were 
2,214 establishments in which lockouts 
were ordered, and 160,823 employes were 



BARONS AND BAREFEET. 21 

thereby set adrift. Of the strikes 82.24 
per cent, were ordered by labor organiza- 
tions and of the lockouts 79.18 per cent, 
were ordered by combinations of man- 
agers. The average days closed to busi- 
ness by strikes was 23 and by lockouts 28.4. 
The strikers gained their points in 10,375 
establishments or in 46.52 per cent, of the 
whole, and part success was gained in 
3,004 cases or 13.47 per cent, of the whole. 
In lockouts the gain by employers was 
only in 564 instances or 25.47 per cent. 

In 65.99 per cent, of the strikes for 
higher wages, the strikers were successful. 
The estimated losses to strikers for the 
period involved were $51,814,723 and to 
employes through lockouts $8,157,717. 

A valuable aid in the study of the prob- 
lem of bread winning as allied to dis- 
tressed labor, is the report for 1886 of 
Carroll D. AVright, United States Labor 
Commissioner. It is an unpartisan ac- 
count of the condition of wage earners. 
By this report it appears that seven and 
one-half per cent, of the mines and fac- 



22 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

tories of the United States were idle or 
equivalent to idle for the whole of the 
year 1885. In round numbers there were 
255,000 of these establishments, employ- 
ing upwards of 2,250,000 hands. By this 
percentage (seven and one-half) there were 
19,129 idle institutions and 168,750 hands 
out of employment. By the same report 
there were in round numbers one million 
IDLE PEOPLE during 1885, in four great 
pursuits, viz.: agriculture, trade and trans- 
portation, mechanical and mining indus- 
tries, and manufactures [census classifi- 
cation]. The commissioner says by "un- 
employed people," as he uses the term he 
means " those who, under prosperous times, 
would be fully employed, and who, during 
the time mentioned, were seeking employ- 
ment." 

One millon idle people cripple the con- 
sumptive power of the country by a loss of 
$300,000,000 annually, for they fail in 
earnings to the extent of $1 each per 
day, or a total loss of wages of $1,000,000 
daily, exclusive of Sundays and holidays. 



BARONS AND BAREFEET. 23 

Mr. Wright alleges that this loss alone 
caused a reaction in business, from which 
resulted apprehension and alarm. 

Do not the foregoing facts show that 
there is a problem of distressed labor in 
America? It is true that hard times are 
not permanent, nor does the depression 
affect all labor, but there are instances of 
great suffering. The conservative com- 
plaints of those who suffer from the out- 
rages of monopolies, trusts, and selfish com- 
binations cannot be dismissed with the 
assertion that dissatisfaction is anarchy, 
that redress is impossible, and that the 
evils complained of are wholly imaginary 
ones. The theories of optimists cannot 
palliate the suffering entailed by poverty 
upon a considerable part of the popula- 
tion, nor can the frequent and serious blun^ 
ders of misguided workingmen prevent 
the recognition by the public of their 
real grievances when they arise. As Col. 
Robert G. Ingersoll so beautifully says, in 
the North American Review for March, 1886: 

" The truth is to-day what it has always 



24 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

been, what it always will be. Those who 
feel are the only ones who think. A cry 
comes from the oppressed, from the hungry, 
from the downtrodden, from the 'unfortu- 
nate, from men who despair and from 
women who weep. There are times when 
mendicants become revolutionists, when 
a rag becomes a banner, under which 
the noblest and the bravest battle for 
right." 

Abandoning, then, all socialistic theories 
of a reformation of the world, also the un- 
just position that labor has no wrongs, and 
that the whole people have no just com- 
plaints, let us survey the facts themselves 
and leave the mazy depths of theory to 
dreamers. Abstaining alike from the ex- 
cesses of speech in which out-cast Euro- 
•peans, whose naifles end in "ski" de- 
nounce all law and from the censure of 
those millionaires — fortunately not all of 
them — who view with cold unconcern the 
sufferings of the poorer people, let us follow 
along in the path of simple truth. What 
of the signs of the times? 



CHAPTER II. 
THE STRUGGLE FOR WEALTH. 

Enormous Production Characterizes the Age — 
Steam Supplants Muscular Energy— Trusts 
AND Monopolies that Rob the Masses— Are the 
Poor Growing Poorer and the Eich Richer ?— 
Increase (»f Wages — Modern Feudalism. 

Notwithstanding the fact that the pro- 
duction of wealth in the United States is 
greater than ever before, its distribution is 
often unjust. This is due to many evils 
which may be traced to the door of mo- 
nopoly, which often oppresses not only 
the laborer but everybody. While the 
wage worker of 1881 received thirty-one 
per cent, more than the wage worker of 
1860 the increase in his earnings did iiot 
keep pace wdth the increase of production. 
He did not always get his equitable portion 
of the profits of industry, if you stop to 
consider the elements he contributed. 
In other words, in 1880 the country's pro- 
duction was $43,000,000,000 (billions) as 

(25) 



26 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

against |16,000,000,000 (billions) in 1860, a 
growth of 170 per cent. In 1880 our man- 
ufactured products alone were $5,300,000,- 
000, a figure showing a much greater in- 
crease over the manufactures of 1860 than 
the 60 per cent, increase in population ac- 
counts for. Wealth has outrun popula- 
tion. 

It has been frequently stated that the 
kings of Wall Street made $80,000,000 in 
1880, and about the same sum in lS85, 
although that year there w^ere 20,000 idle 
factories and nearly a million idle em- 
ployes searching for employment in four 
great pursuits. [See previous chapter for 
details.] 

It requires but a glance to prove that 
the substitution of steam-propelled ma- 
chinery for muscular energy continu- 
ally increases the amount of production, 
and that, as Mr. Thorold Rogers has 
shown in his valuable " Six Centuries of 
Work and Wages," the cheapening of 
necessaries, with few exceptions, follows,* 



* On page 496 of his great work Mr. Rogers says: 



THE STRUGGLE FOR WEALTH. 27 

but the ownership of vast manufactures 
has of late years led to the formation of en- 
gines of oppression known as trusts, whose 
object is to keep up the prices of food prod- 
ucts and clothing. 

There are but three ways of gaining 
wealth — by gift, by industry, and by theft. 
Gift includes a finding; industry includes 
every mental, physical, and moral activ- 
ity; and theft includes all wrongful get- 
ting of property. Now, the question that 
arises in the mind of every thoughtful ob- 
server is, " How are the gigantic fortunes 
of the United States made?" Which of 



** It is easy to prove that the great movement of mod- 
ern days, the employment of mechanical in the place 
of human forces, operates ultimatelyin cheapening prod- 
uce and in bettering the wages of labor. But until that 
is brought about, the producers on the old lines may be 
subjected to severe privations. Nay, unless precau- 
tions are taken against the abuse of labor on the part 
of employers, it is very possible that the mass of those 
vi^ho work under the new system may sink itito a 
lower position than that which they previously occu- 
pied when they were engaged with the old." 

I cannot too often repeat that this work is invalu- 
able to students. Mr. Rogers' book contains accurate 
information for six centuries. 



28 THk, STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

the three methods of property-getting is 
the most useful to the stock gamblers, and 
to men like Jay Gould, who once testified 
in detail how much it costs to buy an a\ or- 
age legislature? The crucial test, which as- 
signs wealth -getting to its proper classifica- 
tion, is found in one question : What equiv- 
alent does the money-maker render to so- 
ciety for the wealth he takes from it? 
When men who are worth millions com- 
bine their wealth to- corner the products 
of industry, raise the price of necessaries 
to an extortionate rate, and thus impover- 
ish the people, they certainly grow rich 
in a wrongful manner. The problem is 
how to prevent combinations of wealth 
for harmful purposes, without interfering 
with proper individual liberties. It will 
hardly be said that the suppression of 
these abuses is an interference with the 
liberties of citizenship. The Government 
in this country has a right each year to 
assume larger powers with the growth of 
civilization, and to assume greater su- 
pervision for the welfare of the people. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR WEALTH. 29 

The prohibition of stock gambhng, trusts, 
and pooHng is a proper function of the 
same government that has the right to 
punish counterfeiting, levy taxes, prohibit 
gambling with cards in States, and pro- 
vide for the general welftire of its subjects. 
All unjust combinations of wealth for the 
purpose of making monopolies of products 
should be prevented by the enactment and 
enforcement of penal codes against them. 
It is encouraging, in this connection, to 
see that the United States Commissioner of 
Labor, in his report for 1886, strongly 
urges the prevention of cornering and 
trading in futures, but he aptly adds that 
the attempt to make any law "to prevent 
men from engaging in the unholy work 
of speculation in food products, especially, 
and in bringing pecuniary responsibility 
to operations in futures, will be found to 
tax the ingenuity of the law maker." In 
concluding his admirable report on this 
subject, he says: "It is to be hoped that 
some efficient means may be found which 
shall destroy the ability of men to work 



30 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

public harm through such kinds of spec- 
ulation." 

Many courts have held that these com- 
binations are unlawful conspiracies, but 
the attempt to prevent their operations 
has seldom proved successful. 

Instances of the injurious effects of such 
combinations are so numerous as to render 
their enumeration unnecessary, yet a few 
citations are not out of place. In Penn- 
sylvania Governor Pattison was, in Oc- 
tober, 1886, struggling to dissolve a giant 
coal pool, by which railway companies 
and coal mining companies foisted the 
])rice of coal in the ver}^ face of a constitu- 
tional provision enacted to restrain such 
evils. In his letter to the attorney -general 
of the State the governor says: "For long 
periods this combination has kept the 
mines running on three-quarter time, thus 
putting nearly one hundred thousand 
workers on what amounted to three- 
quarter pay. ... It has maintained 
the price of coal at figures ranging more 
than $1.00 a ton over and above the 



TPIE STRUGGLE FOR WEALTH. 31 

prices at which it sold the same article to 
consumers further from the mines. . . . 
It has advanced the charges for transpor- 
tation in the face of the fact that the net 
earnings of the carrying companies be- 
longing to the combination amounted to 
about 19 per cent, per annum of the cost 
of the roads and their equipment; and of 
the further fact that charges are higher 
than they were twenty-six years ago, 
though the cost of transporting a ton of 
freight does' not to-day amount to more 
than one-third of its cost at that time. . 
. . Against such combinations the indi- 
vidual is helpless. ... It prejudices 
and oppresses individuals.'* 

In 1886 Jay Gould bought seventy coal 
mines lying within a radius of fifty miles 
of St. Louis for the purpose of killing all 
competition, so that the gains coming from 
the sale of coal might be whatever he dic- 
tated. Though the price of coal was 
raised the wages of miners received no 
corresponding increase. 

In October, 1888, there were seven hun- 



32 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

dred shivering workingmen on the streets 
of Williamsburg because the sugar trust 
which closed De Castro and Banner's great 
refineries decided to lessen the sugar sup- 
ply of the United States. The working- 
men were driven face to face with a winter 
of starvation in order that the barons 
might squeeze a few millions from the con- 
sumers of sugar. In 1887 the hearthstones 
of laboring men were made desolate by a 
similar conspiracy of greed and monopoly. 
The pathos of the situation was indescrib- 
able — women and children in want and 
tears because the Shylocks closed their re- 
fineries. The sugar trust is but one in- 
stance in many like it. A few rapacious 
millionaires, not content with more money 
than they can spend wisely or decently, 
conclude that food products shall not be 
plentiful and cheap, and the people are 
charged extortionate rates while the hand 
of Toil is palsied by idleness. 

The capitalist often makes a claim that 
as the business is his own he may run it 
as he wishes, irrespective of the rights of 



THE STRUGGLE FOR WEALTH. 33 

workmen whom he regards as a species of 
serfs. The trusts thus close at any time 
they see fit to do so. The reasoning by 
which they uphold themselves is falla- 
cious for no business belongs wholly to the 
employer. Every business partakes of the 
elements of a joint concern: E. P. Cheney 
in the "Political Science Quarterly" for 
June, 1889, thus states the case: — 

*'The employer furnishes the capital 
and the general management, while the 
employe furnishes the labor and such in- 
dividual management as may fall to the 
lot of the function he fulfills. Their joint 
product is divided betAveen them. Neither 
from an economic nor from a social point 
of view can the laborer be properly looked 
upon as co-ordinate with the machinery 
and the raw material. He is rather co- 
ordinate with, though performing less 
elevated functions than, his employer. If 
this is so, then the demand of the em- 
ployes that none but union men be en- 
gaged, that such and such shop rules be 
enforced, and similar claims, are not an 
undue interference with the employer's 
affairs but simply a demand for certain 
changes in an affair of joint interest to the 
two parties." 



34 THE STKUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

Again, he says: "This idea, that any 
aggressive action on the part of the em- 
ployes is an undue interference with the 
private affairs of the employer and must 
be punished on his behalf by the public 
courts, seems to be distinctly a survival 
from a period when the courts served 
largely to keep the employed class in sub- 
jection to the employing class." 

Recurring to the question of the dis- 
tribution of wealth it is easy to show that 
while wages have increased, the bulk of 
wealth of this country is inequitably di- 
vided. There are too many rapacious 
millionaires, who, while thriving under 
forms of 'law, insidiously threaten the wel- 
fare of the country by cultivating the de- 
sire for Csesarism in the financial world. 
The man in overalls and shirt sleeves, 
equally with the student of economics 
sees the rapid concentration of wealth in 
forms that wreak evil upon the masses. 
He sees vast corporations, trusts, and syn- 
dicates, growing powerful by criminal con- 
spiracies, ruinous to the welfare of the 
people; he hears of land grants to railroad 



THE STRUGGLE FOR WEALTH. 35 

companies, and he sees laws made by the 
servants of corporations, who serve at the 
beck and nod of their masters. Beholding 
all these things he asks those questions 
born of a desire to see justice done to all 
men. Is it, after all, a wonder that the 
masses turn from the loneliness of the 
night of hard times toward Socialism and 
Nationalism? These forms of relief have 
just enough poetry and promise in them 
to win many a helpless wanderer who 
longs to flee from the awful heat and 
glamour of the industrial warfare. If 
they are mild forms of slavery at best, the 
careworn traveler feels that they cannot 
be worse than the inequalities of the pres- 
ent system. Just here is why the evils 
that cry for redress should receive more 
attention at the hands of the entire people. 
The strikes and lockouts cost money, 
and the trusts are more expensive than 
the strikes. So long as these industrial 
wars and abuses continue the production 
of the country is either lessened or di- 
verted into wrongful channels, and when 



36 THE STRUGGLE FOR RREAD. 

peace is declared, if ever, there will be less 
to divide than if there had been equity 
from the start. 

Let us get at the base of the wrongs that 
are done in the name of the law and to the 
disadvantage of the people. Why is there 
industrial war ? What is its object ? The 
fight is for a more equitable division oC 
the constantly increasing wealth of the 
country. The laborer says he is not get- 
ting enough, while the capitalist insists 
that the laborer should be content with 
his wages, which, he says, were never so 
good in the history of the world. The 
capitalist says to the laborer, " Why do 
you complain ? You earn as much as 
you ever did, do you not?" The work- 
ingman replies, " And you get more than 
you ever did, do you not? There is more 
wealth in the countr}^ than there ever was, 
and we have helped to create this wealth. 
We do not want it all, but we want a 
larger share of it than we now get." Does 
the laborer make out a case, or must we 
believe without question the capitalist's 



THE STRUGGLE FOR WEALTH. 37 

claim that he is liberal enough to pay 
every cent that is in justice the working- 
man's right ? The history of the growth 
of labor unions from the earliest times in 
England shows that capital, left to itself, 
forces wages to a bare subsistence.* 

If the wealth of the country is greater 
to-day than it was yesterday, of course 
there is more to be divided among those 
entitled to it, but the question is, " Whose 
wealth is it? " The laborer says he wants 
more because there is more, and that he 
helped to create the enlarged wealth. Is 
he entitled to an increase, and if so, why? 
As heretofore shown, the material wealth 
of the country increased from $16,000,- 
000,000 to $43,000,000,000, or 170 per 
cent., from 1860 to 1880, but owing to in- 
equalities of industry, an equitable distri- 
bution would give some individuals much 



*Thorold Rogers says, page 400 of ** Work and 
Wages," referring to statutes against laborers, after the 
plan of the statute of Edward VI.: "The imaginary 
offense which employers and lawyers invented for the 
purpose of keeping wages low is on a par with the 
crime of witchcraft." 



38 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

more than others. How much more than 
his share has the greedy monopolist ob- 
tained? The workingmen claim that they 
are justly entitled to more of this wealth 
than they are now getting, and it becomes 
important in this connection to know just 
what they now get, and what they got in 
the past. 

That wages have increased is proved by 
the most casual glance at the figures. 
There is, therefore, part fallacy and part 
truth in the oft-repeated statement that 
the rich are growing richer and the poor, 
poorer,* first stated by Karl Max, the so- 
cialist, and lately rejected by Henry George, 
the land agitator. 

In Great Britain the income tax sched- 
ules furnish reliable evidence as to the 
number of persons whose incomes in this 
country are increasing and diminishing. 

*By the report of Mr. Ford of the Congressional In- 
vestigating Committee the 5,000,000 people of New 
York pay $20,000,003 aniuially to support the paupers 
of that State. Since 1,000,000 of the population are 
wage earners their share per capita to support paupers 
was $20 annually. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR WEALTH. 39 

By that table there were three and one- 
half times as many persons in 1879 with 
an income of $750 per annum as in 1850; 
three times as many with incomes from 
$1,500 to $2,500; two and one-half times 
as many with incomes of $2,500 to $5,000; 
two and three-fourth times as many from 
$10,000 to $15,000, and two and one-half 
times as many with incomes from $5,000 
to $10,000, while during the same era pop- 
ulation increased only 33 per cent. The 
laboring class whose annual incomes are 
less than $750 averaged in 1850-51 $265 ; 
in 1881 the average had risen to $415. 
More than 180,000 persons had ascended 
from the poor class into the class paying 
an income tax. The incomes of those who 
have less than $750 a year increased in 
forty years 130 per cent, Each family 
among the poorer classes in 1843 had 
about $200 a year; but in 1851 $290, and 
in 1880, $500, 

Mulhall in his "Dictionary of Statistics," 
page 28, gives the number in each million 
inhabitants as seen in the following table: 



40 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

$1,000 to $5,000. Over $5,000. 

1812 3280 34 

1850 3059 56 

1860 2896 53 

1870 4139 67 

1880 6225 88 

The wages of cotton operatives in Mas- 
sachusetts were, in 1840, $175 a year with 
13 hours' work; in 1883, wages were $287, 
and hours 11. 

In the United States the most trust- 
worthy returns show that the average in- 
crease in wages since 1860 is 31 per cent., 
and in Massachusetts, 42 per cent, in some 
vocations. During the same period the 
purchasing power of money has increased. 
It has been estimated by Dr. W. T. Har- 
ris that the prices of necessaries are on the 
whole a little lower now than formerly. 
He says that the chief articles that affect 
the cost of living rank as follows in their 
power to raise or lower the said cost of liv- 
ing : grain counts for 25 per cent, of the 
aggregate consumption ; meat for 16 ; iron 
and steel wares for 7; dairy products for 
6J; cotton goods for 6; lumber for 5; 



THE STRUGGLE FOR WEALTH. 41 

woolen goods for 4; and all other items 
for less. Each must be estimated at its 
percentage. Continuing, Dr. Harris says : 
" Taking the twenty items that comprise 
90 per cent, of all human industries the 
result is found that prices of the period 
from 1841-50 are over 5 per cent, higher 
than those of 1881-4. Meat has risen but 
grain has fallen. Agricultural products 
average somewhat higher prices. Manu- 
facturers are much lower." 

All statistic's of wages must be faithfully 
compared with " price levels," showing the 
cost of necessary articles of food, clothing 
and creature comforts. 

In this connection it must be borne in 
mind that increased production has not 
only raised the scale of living, but it has 
employed more people. Thousands of 
men are engaged in new industries which 
were unknown before labor-saving ma- 
chinery. The following interesting facts 
are from the census of the United States 
for 1880 :— 



42 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

1850. 1880. Percent, of 
increase. 

^'"ges^'pa^d^^ $236,755,464. $947,953,795 300 

In England the greatly increased con- 
sumption of food products shows the 
larger earnings of the poor. The wages 
there from 1840 to 1881, according to 
Giffin, increased from 30 to 100 per cent., 
while the hours of work diminished 20 
per cent. The increased deposits in sav- 
ing banks in England and America indi- 
cate greater prosperity of the masses than 
in the past. 

The following table, carefully compiled 
from statistics in England, shows the 
diffusion of increased purchasing power 
and consumption of products among the 
working classes. 

Articles. 1840. 1881. 

Bacon and hams lbs.. 0.01 13.93 

Butter " . . 1.05 6.36 

Cheese ".. 0.92 5.77 

Currants and raisins " . . 1.45 4.34 

Eggs No.. 3.63 21.65 

Potatoes lbs.. 0.01 12.85 

Bice ".. 0.90 16.32 



THE STRUGGLE FOR WEALTH. 43 

Cocoa lbs. 0.08 0.31 

goffee '« . . 1.08 0.89 

Corn, wheat, and wheat flour. " . 42.47 216.92 

Raw Sugar " 

Eefined Sugar «« 

Tea " 

Tobacco " 

"Wine ...gals 

Spirits " 

Malt ' * " «« 



15.20 58.92 

nil. 8.44 

1.22 4.58 

0.86 1.41 

0.25 0.45 

0.97 1.89 



1.59 1.91 



Mr. Seymour Dexter shows in his treat- 
ise on "Co-operative Savings and Loan 
Associations," that hundreds of thousands 
of men are obtaining homes under that sys- 
tem of co-operation. Dr. Richard T. Ely 
states in his " Labor Movement in Amer- 
ica," that up to 1880, 60,000 comfortable 
homes had been constructed in Philadel- 
phia alone by this S3^stem of building. 
These facts undoubtedly show an increase, 
of wealth among the poor. On January 1 
1 889, there were about 4,000 loan associa- 
tions in the United States, scattered from 
ocean to ocean. 

These evidences of thrift do not dis- 
prove the fact that there are many poor, un- 
skilled laborers in England and America 
whose condition is pitiable. He who toils 



44 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

at those handicrafts in which machinery 
competes must work at a continually in- 
creasing disadvantage. Professor J. L. 
Pickard put the case forcibly at a late 
meeting of the National Teachers' Educa- 
tional Association. He said : — 

"The citizen of to-day needs a better 
eqaipment than he of the past. In indus- 
trial life there has been a constant aban- 
donment of old forms and a constant in- 
troduction of new agencies. The sickle 
has given place to the reaper; a self-binder 
has diminished the number of followers of 
the reaper; steam has supplemented or 
transplanted entirely the white wings of 
commerce; the palace car has relegated 
the Concord coach to the back -yard of 
some hostlery; the steady motion of the 
feminine foot produces more and better 
stitches than the most nimble fingers; the 
spinning-wheel of the grandmother stands 
unused in the garret, while a few steps 
back and forth of the grand-daughter 
multiply a hundred fold the threads most 
deftly spun. Still the old principle re- 
mains. It is the sickle, the vessel, the 
coach, the needle, the wheel, unchanged 
in name or in purpose, but greatly in- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR WEALTH. 45 

creased in capacity and power under the 
new development. This increase is not 
an inspiration of matter but of mind, 
which better understands and controls 
matter. The demand of the age is, there- 
fore, for a quickened mind, and the 'new 
education,' must supply the quickening 
power. To this end it must enter new 
fields, make broader and better cultivation 
of the old, — -discard old and insufficient 
tools, introduce new and more effective 
agencies and methods."* 

Even when the citizen is fully equipped 



*It is interesting in this connection to notice the fol- 
lowing facts: Steam engines in Great Britain amount 
to 9,740,000,000 horse power. Steam engines in the 
Continent of Europe amount to 14,820,000,000 horse 
power. Steam engines in the United States amount 
to 10,540,000,000 horse power. 

For further evidences that wages are inc^^easing, see 
Chapter VI., where the rates of skilled lal)or are 
shown. The average rate of skilled labor in Illinois 
(see labor report for 1884) is given at $2.12^ per day. 
766 establishments in Illinois pay $2.50 and over; 
1,400 establishments out of a total of 1,650, pay $2.00 
and over. Teamsters make $459.59; tailors, $542.94; 
stone masons, $467.21; printers, $654. Contrast these 
figures with the 4,240 millions of dollars annual in- 
come in Russia, which gives an average of 14 cents per 
day to each inhabitant. 



46 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

to compete with machinery, he has other 
and more powerful enemies to fight. 
There are unwholesome combinations of 
greed which cannot be .put down by the 
private citizen who meets them hand to 
hand in the combat. It is greatly as Mr. 
James F. Hudson, the eminent writer 
on the railw^ay problem, says: — 

" Our modern feudalism is most appar- 
ent in the erection of great and irrespon- 
sible rulers of industry whose power, like 
that of the feudal barons, pursues the peo- 
ple and even overshadows the Government 
which gave it existence. The only impor- 
tant distinction is, that, in the old days of 
force, the power of feudalism was measured 
by thousands of warriors, while in the 
days of modern plutocracy, it is measured 
by millions of money." 

Let us next see how the prostitution of 
the iron highway to purposes of private 
gain affects the whole people. 



CHAPTER III. 
THE RAILWAY PROBLEM. 

One of the Persistent Causes of Industrial De. 

PRESSION Is the Ar>USE THAT INHERES IN THE 

Present Railway System— Charging the Traf- 
fic ALL IT Will Bear Is Robbery of the People 
— Corruption of Legislation — Legal Defini- 
tion OF Highways — Earnings of the Roads — 
Extent of Stock Watering — How Agricultur- 
ists Are Oppressed, etc., etc. 

Railroads, notwithstanding their many 
benefits to society, are not operated on the 
principle of "the greatest good to the 
greatest number." The leading motive of 
the railway companies is money-getting, 
irrespective of the general welfare of the 
people, for the principle ever kept in view 
by the companies is, as formulated in 
their maxim, " Charge the traffic all it will 
bear," which means "Let us grow rich 
and let the people look out for them- 
selves." 

The reverse of the railway motto should 

(47) 



48 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

be the rule. The public has a right to the 
lowest possible rates, for since the roads 
are highways their benefits should be for 
the many. 

Steam has greatly reduced the cost of 
transportation and driven all other compe- 
tition from the field. It has so multiplied 
our list of necessaries, by uniting the in- 
terests of distant localities, that values are 
relative and all bare figures are mislead- 
ing when applied to freight and passenger 
rates ; hence it is not a fair test to compare 
tariffs with ante-railway rates.* The 



*Railroads have reduced the cost of carrying 
freight from 3J cents per ton per mile to I cent per 
ton per mile, and thereby saved more than |500,000,- 
000 annually to the country (the actual freight charges 
being |416,000,000, and the old rates would be more 
than $1,000,000,000.) Mr. Atkinson shows that in 
1883 Ohio alone saved $89,000,000 over the rates of 
1869. The American Economic Association's report, 
July, 1887, says : 

The history of the railway, as perhaps that of no 
other economic institution of our national life, serves 
to illustrate the inevitable tendency of a strong gov- 
ernment, if not to extend the actual sphere of its 
duties, at least to increase in importance by the grow- 
ing importance of its functions. 



THE RAILWAY PROBLEM. 49 

question is not, hoiv much cheaper are 
freights to-day than at some past time, but 
how much higher are they to-day than they 
shotdd he. 

It requires no argument to prove that 
when these raih'oad tariff-lists on the prod- 
ucts of industry are enormously high 
the result is the impoverishment of those 
who are compelled to ship their products 
and pay tlie rates. To come directly to 
the question, if the farmer is deprived of 
an enlarged* market, by a freight rate 
that eats up the margin of profit which 
the distant market would give him over a 
local one, he cannot prosper. 

A slight study of freight rates shows 
that tliey are sufficiently high to leave 
very little margin to agriculturists, espe- 
cially those who live in the West and 
South. For example, the joint rates for 
transportation, as reported by the Com- 
missioner of Agriculture in 1885, were as 
follows, on the following articles: On corn 
rye, oats and barley, per hundred pounds,, 
from Kansas City to Cliicago, 20 cents- 



50 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

hogs, single deck per car, |42.50 ; unman- 
ufactured tobacco, per hundred pounds, 
35 cents; wheat, per hundred pounds, 25 
cents. The rates from Chicago to New 
York were as follows : Grain, per one hun- 
dred pounds, 30 cents ; live hogs, per hun- 
dred pounds, 30 cents ; wool, per hundred 
pounds, compressed in small bales, 85 
cents. 

There have been frequent instances 
where railroad companies have suddenly 
increased their freight rates ©n farm prod- 
ucts when the markets were for any rea- 
son stimulated, until the freightage thus 
extorted absorbed the difference in prices 
between the local and the distant market. 
In effect this is equivalent to a failure of 
crops, since, if the farmer's crop nets him 
no gain, he might as well not have planted 
it. The reduction of the farmer's receipts 
results, so far as he is concerned, in en- 
forced economy, which is an exact defini- 
tion of hard times. He is cut short, un- 
til he becomes not only economical, but 
parsimonious, from necessity. The crip- 



THE RAILWAY PROBLEM. 51 

pling of the consumptive power of so large 
a percentage of the popuhition as the ag- 
riculturists also involves the industries of 
the entire country. The warehouses of 
manufacturers become overstocked, there 
is a cessation of production, and there are 
lockouts and "shut-downs," or a general 
lowering of wages. Thus, a large crop 
that cannot be sold for good prices reduces 
the consumptive power of the entire pop- 
ulation, part of whom are forced to be idle. 
When one reflects that out of a total busi- 
ness population of 17,000,000 nearly 8,- 
000,000 '(7,670,493), with the families de- 
pendent on them for support, were in 1880, 
engaged in agricultural pursuits, *an idea 
may be gained of the disaster which must 
overtake the industries of the country 
when the railroad companies inflict these 
abuses upon them. 

The actual cost of carrying freight and 
passengers is so low, compared with the 
rates charged by the companies, that the 

*See table showing persons engaged in various pur- 
suits in the United States, Turn to "Appendix." 



52 THE -STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

average man will hardly believe the fig- 
ures when he sees them. Suppose that 
we turn our attention to the reports of the 
companies and others who are supposed to 
know most about these things. On the 25th 
day of June, 1885, two eminent construc- 
tion engineers, Mr. E. Sweet and Mr. E. 
L. Corthel, read addresses before the 
American Society of Civil Engineers on 
the subject of the cost uf carrying freight. 
These two papers tlirow great light on 
the subject, and aid the commonest lay- 
man in reasoning out this problem. Here 
is what they say : — 

'' The reasons for the reduced cost in 
railway transportation of late years are im- 
provements in the condition of railroads 
by better construction, better maintenance 
of the track, and in more economical ad- 
ministration ; also in the increased amount 
of the freight hauled on one train, which 
is made possible by the increase in loco- 
motive power, and in the capacity of the 
cars. The train-load has increased about 
75 per cent. The capacity of cars iu- 



THE RAILWAY PROBLEM. 53 

creased from 20,000 pounds in 1855, to 
40,000 pounds in 1876. The carrying 
capacity in 1885 was 50,000 pounds, and 
the master car-builders have recently de- 
cided upon a standard car which will 
carry 60,000 pounds. The weight of cars 
on the Pennsylvania Railroad increased 
from 20,500 to 22,000 only, from 1870 to 
1881, but in the same period the load 
cai)acity increased from 20,000 to 40,000 
pounds. Cost of hauling on American 
railways has been about 6-100 of a cent 
per ton per mile. All expenses included, 
on the best American railways, the cost 
of both handling and hauling has been 
about three mills per ton per mile. All 
expenses, including receiving, loading, 
hauling, handling, discharging, and every 
other expense, has been a])Out four mills 
per ton per mile, average,on American rail- 
ways." 

Are these figures not enough to reveal, 
even to the simplest mind, the fact that 
there must be vast abuses in the depart- 
ment which fixes tariff rates on our pro- 



54 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

ducts? How else can you account for the 
enormous difference between cost of trans- 
portation and charges to patrons.* Let us 

*i^OTE. — Charles Francis Adams has drawn a striking 
picture of these evils. He says: — 

"Everywhere, and at all times, these corporations 
illustrate the truth of the old maxim of the common 
law, that corporations have no souls. . . . The 
system of corporate life and corporate power, as applied 
to industrial development, is yet in its infancy. It tends 
always to development, — always to consolidation; — 
it is ever grasping new powers or insidiously exercis- 
ing covert influence. Even now the system threatens 
the central Gover/nnent. . . . The belief is com- 
mon in America that the day is at hand when corpor- 
ations far greatsr than Erie — swaying power such aa 
has never in the world's history been trusted in the 
hands of mere private citizens, controlled by single 
men like Vander'nilt, or by combinations of men like 
Fisk, Gould, and Lane, after having created a system 
of quiet but irrepressible corruption, will ultimately 
succeed in directing Government itself. . . . We 
know what aristocracy, autocracy, democracy are, 
but we have no word to express governmeni by vioneyed 
corporations; yet the people already instinctively seek 
protection against it, and look for such protection, 
and significantly enough, not to their own Legislatures, 
but to the single autocratic feature retained in our 
system of government — a veto by the Executive. 
Vanderbilt embodies the autocratic power of Ctesarism 
introduced into corporate life; and as he alone cannot 



THE RAILWAY PROBLEM. 55 

analyze some of these abuses, but first let 
us view a few general principles. 

Whoever or whatever imposes unneces- 
sary restraints upon the power and right 
of free locomotion, and whoever and what- 
ever unnecessarily removes from men the 
power to freely exchange commodities, 
wields a tyrannical influence over the peo- 
ple. 

The unhampered exchange of services 
is the foundation of prosperity. The 
power to change our habitations cheaply, 
as pleasure, convenience, or business de- 
mands, is a blessing. No Government has 
the right to rob the people of this power. 

High freight and high passenger rates 
make men dependent. Dependency is 
slavery in part. The barnacle, the oyster, 
( annot move. No muscular power can 
compete with steam. The uncivilized 



obtain complete government of the State, it perhaps 
only remains for the coming man to carry the combi- 
nation of elements one step in advance and put Ctesar- 
ism at once in control of the corporations, and of the 
proletariat, to briag our vaunted institutions within 
the dreadful rule of all historic precedent." 



56 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

man is tyrannized over by gravitation, 
wliich his forces cannot conquer; but the 
civilized man invented the steam engine, 
"hitched his wagon to a star." It kills 
time and space, throwing weary miles 
over its Atlantan shoulders untiringly, 
carrying godlike burdens, and yet the peo- 
ple have not been given the highest serv- 
ices which steam offers to the race. The 
tyrants of modern industry, the barons of 
the feudalism of money stand between tlie 
citizen and the enjoyment of these high 
privileges. They impose useless burdens 
upon the power to exchange our services, 
the products of workshop and field. 

Then what is this railway question, of 
whicli we hear so much ? Are there not 
some general principles underlying the 
system itself, the violation of which is fol- 
lowed by the evils of whicli we complain? 

The railway problem proper, in the 
highest and most accurate meaning of the 
terms, is nothing moi'e nor less than the 
problem of so utilizing steam methods of 
land locomotion as to give to every citizen 



THE RAILWAY PKv)iiiJ::sr. hi 

the highest K])erty of transporatioii con- 
sistent with the hke HIjerty of every other 
citizen. In other words, how to use this 
new giant, which carries tons faster than 
the wind blows a feather, to the best ad- 
vantage of all men ; and to do this without 
violating the principles of American lib- 
erty, and without doing violence to prop- 
erty in vested rights. 

The legal authorities are almost unani- 
mous in the conclusion that railways are 
highways. Whether we read the opinion 
of Chief Justice Waite in the case of the 
Pensacola Telegraph Company (96 U. S. 
page 1), in which he says that railways are 
highways, or the many legal text-books on 
the subject, the conclusions are the same. 
The principle has been clearly enunciated 
in many cases by the Supreme Courts of 
nearly all tli older States, especially by 
the courts oi' New York, Massachusetts, 
Connecticut, Mar^dand, the Carolinas, 
Vermont, Iowa, and Pennsylvania. In 
a large number of States, among which are 
Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, Illinois, 



58 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

Penns\^lvania. and Texas, the State Con- 
stitutions declare tliat railways arc public 
highways. This eminently just pnnci})le 
and sound conclusion of law was declared 
more forcibly than for many years by the 
Supreme Court of the United States in 
Olcott vs. The Supervisors, IG Wall. 078. 
The pul)Hc character and i)ublic obliga- 
tions of the roads have long ago passed, 
beyond question, into the common law of 
America. While this is true in theory, 
the ftict stares us in the face that a monop- 
oly of the highway, the exciusivc right to move 
trains over the road, destroys competition 
and robs the road of the essential advan- 
tages of a highway to the people at large.* 



*NoTE. — A study of the history of highways will 
show that a comprehensive definition, embracitjg 
every phase of land ways, cliaracterizes them as such 
moilificatio.TS of the surface of the earth as will enable 
it Htly to receive the vehicle furnished by the civiliza- 
tion of the era. Thus a road is primarily the essen- 
tial outlet or sole pathway for locomotion on the laud. 

Highways are of great antiquity. They must have 
existed in ancient E^ypt in great perfection, for the 
Egyptians had hard, smooth roads, over which they 



THE RILWAY PROBLEM. 59 

It is strange that rail ways ever degenerated 
into sucli an abuse, in view of the fact 



carried immense blocks of stone for the Pyramids, 
liighways also existed among the Hebrews, for in 
Judges, chapter v, verse 6, Deborah sings of aban- 
doned highways: " In the days of Shanigar, the son of 
Anath, in the days of Jael, the high ways were unocc- 
upied, and the travelers walked through byways." 
In ancient Greece and Rome raad-building was a great 
scienee, but the Carthaginians seem to have excelled 
all others as builders of great roads. The student of 
history will recall the Roman roads. Via Appia, Via 
Aurelia, the Tyrrhean coast roads, and the famous 
Flamminian way. Roman military roads were also 
very numerous. Going into another country we find 
that Alexander Humboldt, philosopher and student, 
says th it the aucieat Incas built wonderful roads, and 
he refers t > their mountain highways over the Andes. 
The evolution of the road and the evolution of road 
vehicles have necessarily been almost simultaneous, the 
improvement of the vehicle demanding such a modifi- 
cation of the road as to render it useful and safe. 
Chariots are the most ancient road vehicles of which 
history speaks. The first chariot was made by Erich- 
thonius, at Athens, 1486 B. c, and the earliest pur- 
poses for which transportation was applied were war 
and agriculture — war first and most universally. [See 
Exodus 14:7.] In England, the earliest vehicle was 
the "carstta" of the thirteenth century, and it was 
used chiefly for women. Next came the two-horse 
litter of the fourteenth century. Highways them- 



60 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

that their character as highways is the 
sole license by which the companies were 

selves are, in England, said to be "of immemorial an- 
tiquity, or else created by act of Parliament. " Horses 
and camels are found in abundance in regions first peo- 
pled by man, and riding on the backs of camels doubt- 
less preceded the custom of driving domestic animals 
harnessed to vehicles. As a further historical study 
it may be interesting to know that the various meth- 
ods of transportation used in ages past have necessa- 
rily been determined by the climatic conditions of the 
countries where travelers have journeyed. The known 
methods of transportation miy be briefly summarized 
as follows: Riding or driving horses, mules, asses, 
oxen, camels, elephants, dromedaries, reindeer, dogs, 
sometimes ostrich riding among Africans of the inte- 
rior; snow skating in Lapland ; skating on frozen ca- 
nals in Holland, with bundles on the head ; and lastly, 
oriental palamjuins. These methods have often in- 
volved the use of peculiar vehicles, such as the Syrian 
ox-cart, the two-wheeled French brounette, the Rus- 
sian telega, which is a rapid cart, — or the many mod- 
ifications of vehicles seen in all ages. 

I take occasi »n here to say that under the principle 
of eminent domain the State can conlemn a railway's 
franchise or any of its vested I'ights as well as any 
other property. All classes of property are subject to 
the law of eminent domain. The railway franchises 
are not more sacred, nor are they held by rights more 
inviolable, than any other property. I deem it unnec- 
essary to give any citations to legal authorities on so 



THE RAILWAY PROBLEM. 61 

authorized to build at the outset, and in 
the original charters it was plainly in- 
tended that the railway com{)anies should 
not have a monopoly of the track. In 
the older grants there was a i)lain decla- 
ration that the oidy monopoly given to 
the companies was the right to charge the 
public reasonable tolls for o})erating their 
trains over the roads. However, no matter 
how plain this intention may have been, 
the wealthy men who owned the roads 
soon smothered out every possibility of 
putting the theory into actual practice, 
and in truth the companies at once as- 
sumed absolute control of the roads, roll- 
ing stock, and all appurtenances. Not 
only so, but the legislation of the country 
is at their pleasure. 

You have heard the standing joke, 



plain a proposition; but no sound lawyer will deny it. 
Whosoever desires to study the origin of railways 
will do well to get the early charters, in which the 
intent was plain that the exclusive right to own 
and operate trains on the highway was not recognized, 
[See law of eminent domain.] 



62 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

which has been repeated for many years 
in the Pennsylvania Legislature, when a 
member should see fit to move an adjourn- 
ment of the House. Uniformly he would 
say, "Mr. Speaker: Since the Pennsyl- 
vania Railway Company has no more 
business for this body to transact, I now 
move we adjourn." No Avonder that a 
prominent railway manager once said, 
that if the people knew the " ins " and 
"outs" of this despicable system of robbery 
in the name of vested rights, " The bare- 
footed militia would charge down from 
the hills and tear up the tracks." 

Who shall say that heartless discrimi- 
nations, selfish freight rates, pooling, 
stock-gambling, bulling and bearing the 
market, charging the traffic all it will bear, 
which means to draw the last drop of 
blood from the people, who shall say that 
these and like false conditions, have not 
had much to do with the unequal and 
cruel distribution of wealth in this coun- 
try, especially with the depression of the 



THE RAILWAY PROBLEM. 63 

farming classes who, according to statis- 
tics, get less than their share of the coun- 
try's production?* 

It cannot be disputed or gainsaid in 
any way, that there can he no thorough com- 
petition between independent railroad comim- 
nies operating trains on different highway Sy 
each company owning the poiuerful monopoly 
of its oivn line. If there is ever to be 
thorough and honest competition, such as 
will bring down the cost of transportation, 
it must be, not between railway companies, 
each of tvhich has its oimi special chain of 
stations, ivith but one competing point to 
every nine stations, averaged on the best 
roads, but between trains operated by sepa- 
rate companies on a common public highway 
where rates have, by opposition, been re- 



* The average per capita earnings of the business 
population is 134.80 each per month. The farm la- 
borer gets but $22.29 without board, and the farmer 
himself but little more for his time, when interest on 
his investments is deducted. These estimates are fur- 
nished by Mr. J. R. Dodge, of the National Agricult- 
ural Bureau, The averfige is of wages paid in various 
States. 



64 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

diiced as near as possible to first cost or a 
fair minimum.* However, the chief bene- 
fit to be reaped from competition, after 
the highway shall be in fact emancipated, 
is in the increase of the number of trains 
that will use the road, thereby dividing the 
expense of maintaining the track between 
the largest possible number of trains, and, 
therefore, between the largest possible 
number of travelers or tons of freight. 
In other words, the people, who must, under 
the present system, always pay interest on 
the inflated sum total of railway invest- 
ments, will be given, under the system of 
sovereign ownership of tJie highway itself, 
numerous trains at rates which, compared 

* "On the first day of January, 1887, there were, 
according to the Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, 
33,694 railroad stations in the United States, of which 
2,778 were junction points, i. e., are points where 
there are more than one railroad, leaving 30,916 sta- 
tions where there is but one railroad." — Speech of 
Senator CuUom, Jan. 17, 18S7. 

When we consider that many of these junction 
points were on roads not having even a terminus in 
common, it is evident that the field of competition is 
relatively small. 



THE RAILWAY PROBLEM. 65 

with the present tariff lists, seem ridicu- 
lously low. The distinction between Gov- 
ernment ownership of the tracks and 
rolling-stock, coupled with Government 
management of the entire railway system, 
and the soveriegn control of the track only, 
must never be lost sight of This distinc- 
tion is essentially fundamental, and lies at 
the basis of a thorough conception of the 
philosophy of the highway.* 

*The business of owning and operating trains, disci- 
plining men and carrying on the many details of pas- 
senger and freight transportation is one tiling, a pursuit 
separate and distinct from any other, and character- 
ized by peculiar skill and requirements; the pursuit of 
owning the railway track (if that conveys to the mind 
any idea of complex activity) is another and wholly 
different affair. It is this latter passive and equitable 
ownership, which is the province of the State. The 
railway business, operation of trains, ownership of 
rolling stock, etc., etc., belongs to private companies. 
The State should not meddle with that at all. Sov- 
ereignty should own the highway and throw it open 
to citizen companies. It would not follow that air 
men would be fit to own and operate trains any more 
than that all men are fit to print the reports of the Su- 
preme Court of the State or to repair broken watches. 
Practicability would limit the business to safe men, 

6 



66 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

Two of the most famous railway kings 
of the century, one of whom was Gould, in 

while demand and supply would regulate numbers, 
and weed out a superfluity. As heretofore said, the 
idea expressly embraced in all the early charters of 
railroad companies was that one company should own 
the highway, and allow the public its use. The right 
to take tolls was granted, but not the right to exclude 
other companies or carriers. Any student can look 
this matter up. See Kedfield on Railways, and see 
decisions of Atlantic States. This statement is a mat- 
ter of history that may be readily verified and it may 
be found in many decisions. To dwell too much 
upon weary and useless references is not my purpose. 
According to the most reliable railway authority in 
the United States — "Poor's Manual" — there is an 
over-capitalization of more than fom' billion dollars in 
American railway investments. By a fictitious system 
called "stock watering," these giants of American 
commerce have inflated the values of their roads, 
equipments, and total outlay to such an enormous ex- 
tent that the per cent, whicli they make does seem 
rather small. However, when they tell us that they 
have made 3^ per cent, on the investment of a given 
year, that per cent, must be multiplied by two or 
three to get at the truth. According to Poor, the net 
earnings of the roads for 1S83 was nine per cent, of their 
cost. P.y the report of a New York Legislative In- 
vestigating Committee, it seems that the New York 
Central and Hudson Kiver Railway Company had in- 



THE RAILWAY PROBLEM. 67 

addressing the New York Legislature rela- 
tive to franchises, spoke of the subject in 
this light and said: "It is the primary 
duty of the State to furnish highways, 

creased its capital one hundred and forty-six per cent, 
by this itifamous and fictitious policy. The Erie 
Railway Company had watered its st )ck over seventy 
per cent. The Pennsylvania Railway Company had, 
by the infamous process of increasing its investments, 
by pretended outside interests in other companies, 
swelled its wealth until its excess of stock was enor- 
mous; and when it said it had cleared 8 per cent, in 
the year 1884, the truth is it had cleared 17 per cent. 
The great Western roads, called Granger Lines, have 
committed equally gross frauds. The Union Pacific 
road, according to the testimony of Mr. Charles Fran- 
cis Adams, has been guilty of enormous intiatiou to 
deceive the people; and this road owes the people 
sixty million dollars, on which it has not paid one- 
third of tlie low interest due by its obligations. 

According to Mr. John Swan, who has written a 
book that attracted some attention, entitled, "An In- 
vestor's Notes on Amei'ican Railroads," (and at one 
time general mannger of the Alabama and Great South- 
ern Railroad, and a friend of the present system,) by 
far the larger per cent, of the capital invested in our 
railroads is owned by foreigners, who are ignorant of 
our affairs, and careless of our rights; they do not be- 
long to this soil, nor sympathize with the people of 
this country. 



68 THE STKUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

whether roads, turnpikes, canals, or rail- 
roads." Singularly they added, "The 
State alone having the right of eminent 
domain." 

The best train dispatchers with whom 
I have conversed tell me that sovereign 
ownership of the road-bed, is eminently 
practicable, and that any good railway 
man could readily arrange the details of 
management. In fact, the same thing is 
practiced every day. Have you never 
known two or three comj)anies to jointly 
own one track of ten, twenty, thirty, or 
one hundred miles? Such ownership is 
common, and on these roads the compa- 
nies run independent locomotives, with 
their own engineers and rolling stock. 
Two great roads use the track between 
Newark and Columbus, Ohio. The Pitts- 
burg, Ft. Wayne and Chicago has also 
used tracks jointly with other companies. 
On the Pennsylvania Railroad I once 
counted cars of more than a dozen inde- 
pendent companies, but all were operated 
by a common train dispatcher. The pre^ 



THE RAILWAY PROBLEM. 69 

tense that tlie rolling stock and the higli- 
way must he owned hy one coni[)any to 
insure safety is the ultimatum of nonsense. 
Can a solitary reason be given for the ne- 
cessity of such dual ovvnershii)? Of course, 
many roads which now j)ossess niggardly- 
maintained single tracks would need to l)e 
extended by the addition of two or three 
parallel tracks. Other details which 
readily occur to any sensible man would 
need to be skillfully arranged; but to say 
that the plan is impossible, contradicts the 
opinion of many eminent and practical 
railway men, as \v ell as the practices which 
may be seen on scores of roads throughout 
the United States. 

But even under the present system, a re- 
duction of rates would be follow^ed by in- 
creased receipts and profits to the com- 
pany. The lesson of the Post-office De- 
partment, which diminished postr.ge to 
increase receipts, has not been followed 
largely enough by the railroads. " Poor's 
Manual," the standard compendium of 
railway figures, shows that freight rates 



70 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

have decreased 6S per cent, in the past 
25 years, but the earnings of the compa- 
nies have increased 72 per cent. On tlic 
western roads a reduction of 40 per cent, 
within a few years increased the earnings 
nearly one hundred per cent. As a gen- 
eral rule, a decrease in the price of such 
commodities as postage and fares multi- 
plies receipts in an inverse ratio. 

The railroad laws of nearly every State 
are carelessly drawn, and even where leg- 
islation has been wisely pursued it is ex- 
ceedingly difficult of enforcement, owing 
to the power which railway conii)anies 
wield in high places. 

Railway corporations are creatures of 
the Stale, and the question has of late 
years assumed this form: Either the 
Stale must control the railroads, or the 
railroads will control the State. Freipient 
attempts to control the roads in the gen- 
eral interest, both in Euroi)eand America, 
sliow that it requires many statutes and 
otlieers. much interference, and tlie exercise 
of many objectionable powers of Govern- 



THE RAILWAY PROBLEM. 71 

mnnt, even to modify the abuses of monop- 
oly. In view of the enlarged demands of 
tlie times, even with the maxim that tlie 
Government should not interfere where in- 
dividuals can do as well, the exigency for 
more specific limitations and more direct 
control has alreadv arisen.* 



*N()TK.. — The word rohher// used in relation to rail- 
way c' arges has been applied by such eminent writers 
as the author of " Wayland's Political Economy." 
Some thinkers suggest that the present tariffs on 
freight and j-assenger traffic are the natural outgrowth 
of the monopoly system, and that they have already 
reactetl disastiously upon the system and limited it to 
very narrow dimensions compared to what it would 
ha had it been dilTerently administered. The present 
methods are essentially restrictive. The masses 
travel but little, and millions of tons of freight that 
should be in motion are at rest, although the roads 
are often working to their full capacity. Were the 
lint s and facilities quadruppled and rates reduced so 
that at a minimum profit no stock should remain idle, 
the lines, even under the present system, might earn 
more than now. This tended to illustration during 
the late rate-war from Missouri Eiver points to the 
Pacific, although the roads could not accommodate 
the demands; and to deprive way or local travel of 
low rates, they absolutely exacted an overcharge to be 
returned as rebate. Suspecting the companies' mo- 



72 THE STRUGGLE FOR BKP:AD. 

The folly of the argument that our pros- 
perity is due to the railway management 

tives, the rural population refused the tickets at five 
dollars each. Even then the roads that had -been do- 
ing almost nothing had to curtail the ticket sales be- 
cause overcrowded, and the receipts from this crippled 
business, managed on a narrow basis, averaged from 
twenty to forty thousand dollars daily. Yet so igno- 
rant are the masses as to the cost of railway transpor- 
tation that it is often supposed that the roads lost 
money, whereas, on the contrary, those cut-rates stiui- 
ulated a traffic which replenished their funds. 

Speaking of the first railway in England, "Chambers' 
Encyclopedia" says: "Now began that course of com- 
mercial enterprise, unregulated, and often wasteful, 
which has since assumed such importance. Refrain- 
ing from all control over railway operations, the Gov- 
ernment left speculators to carry lines anywhere or any- 
how that Parliament could be persuaded to sanction. 
The result has been in many places a c amplication of 
competing lines on no principle of economy or eulight- 
ened foresight. Abandoned, as it were, to the audac- 
ity of promoters, and the mere brute force of cap- 
ital, schemes, good, bad, and indifferent, had to fight 
their way at cost almost exceeding belief. . . Mak- 
ing every allowance, therefore, for the high social 
value of the railway system, it has certainly reached a 
point of despotic overbearance that re((uires some 
species of control more effectual than the present sys- 
tem," In 1874 a Parliament committee reported that 



THE RAILWAY PROBLEM. 73 

is only surpassed by the superstition of 
those old witches who, each time they 
g-lanced out of their windows, saw a fune- 
ral procession, and believed it was the act 
of looking out of the window which called 
forth the procession. It tests and proves 
the greatness of this country, that prosper- 
ity has come like the sunshine and the 
rain in spite of the present inequalities of 
the railway system, which has threatened 
our welfare in a thousand directions at 
every step. True enough, the roads have 
opened to the markets millions of acres of 
rich lands, and made possible the growth 
of cities where were solitudes, yet there is 
in the entire list of railway achievements 
no excuse to warrant the gift of these iron 
highways to corporations that rob the 
people of benefits which the inventor of 
the steam engine meant to be a gift to the 
human race. 



"no means have yet been devised by which competi- 
tion can be maintained." 



CHAPTER IV. 

PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF LNAD. 

Fallacies ok Henry George's Theory that one 
OF THE Causes of Povkkty is the Private Own- 
ership OF Land —How Civilization and thk In- 
crease OF ProoPerity have been Aided by Own- 
ership of Lvnd— Some Ideas on Land and the 
Rights of Property. 

Henry George, a florid writer, has of 
late years created considerable interest in 
the land question by his "Progress and 
Poverty," a book full of good intentions, 
but singularly free from any references 
to facts of liistory or statistics to upliold its 
radical conclusions. At the outset Mr. 
George repeats the old statement of Karl 
Marx that the poor are growing poorer and 
more numerous and the rich riclier and 
fewer. He nowhere cites income tables, 
nor is there tliroughout his argument a 
single comparison of })rice-levels of food 
products with previous years. He nowhere 
(74) 



PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF LAND. 75 

shows what rental incomes amount to, 
nor does he give an idea of the ratio of 
rents to incomes. 

The proposition that there can be no 
private ownership of land without injus- 
tice to the masses, was formulated by 
French economists and by Herbert Spencer 
long before Henry George's appearance.* 

The fallacies of the theory propounded 
by Henry George are so numerous that a 
cool perusal of his book is sufficient to con- 
demn its argument and conclusions as 
vicious and misleading ; and yet his style 
is so catchy, his good wishes for mankind 
are so heart-felt, and his pictures of poverty 



*NoTE.— Mr, George told me in 1887 that at a ban- 
quet in London, at which both Herbert Spencer and 
Mr. George were guests, Mr. Spencer repudiated his 
early p isitiou on the land problem, as announced in "So- 
cial Statics." It seems that the English philospher also 
went to the trouble to write an article for a London 
periodical setting forth that his early position was all 
wrong. In "Social Statics," the reader will remem- 
ber that Spencer's position was that private ownership 
is ine(iuital)le. Mr. (ieorge was so vexed that he kept 
away from the philosopher, and left the banquet early 
in the evening. 



76 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

SO pathetic, that thousands of misguided 
workingmen have hailed him as the Mo- 
ses whose footsteps were turned toward the 
hind of sunshine and gold. Not only so, 
but a surprisingly great number of law- 
yers and well-informed men and women 
in the liigher walks of life have grown 
garrulous and vehement in trying to ac- 
comi)lish the reformation of the world ac- 
cording to the Henry George method. 

I once knew a young college })rofessor 
who became interested in " Progress and 
Poverty," but he ran upon some snags 
that puzzled him. He wrote to the au- 
thor of the book, and Mr. George promptly 
answered him, simply assuring him that 
having read the book, his mind would 
soon be filled with the truths of the new 
gospel, so that he could accomplish great 
good among his fellow-men. In conclu- 
sion, he begged the young man to read 
" Progress and Poverty " again, and as- 
sured him that his mind would then be 
at ease. After the third reading the dis- 
ciple told me that he wondered what there 



PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF LAND. 77 

was in the book to attract so iBuch atten- 
tion, for he found that^ it ignored data 
that were essential, and jumped at conclu- 
sions without evidence. 

The example is but one in thousands 
where men were fascinated by the first 
reading of the book and afterwards repu- 
diated its teachings. Much less is heard 
of the author and of the book than for- 
merly, and both will doubtless pass into 
obscurity with the thousand other falla- 
cies that belong to the age of sensation- 
alism. 

Mr. ^George's foundation stone is rent. 
He holds that all the advances made by 
ca}>ital and labor are swallowed up by 
rent, which is levied by the land barons, 
and yet he gives no statistics or ratios of 
land values or rents. He believes that the 
increase in the value of land is taken from 
the hard earnings of toil, and that the 
tendency of rent is to leave labor a bare 
living margin, and to allow to capital 
only that interest which will induce it to 
seek investment. 



78 THE STftOGGLE FOR BREAD. 

"The persistence of poverty amid ad- 
vancing wealth," to use his words, or tlie 
increase of progress and poverty in an age 
of civilization, Mr. George would prevent 
by prohibiting private property in land, 
eitlier by taxing land until nobody would 
want to own it, except for active use, or by 
some direct proceeding to vest its owner- 
ship in the whole people — in sovereignty. 

Mr. George then draws pictures of the 
millennium. "The whole enormousweight 
of taxation in the form of rent would be 
lifted from productive industry." He be- 
holds the " rise of wages; " he sees parks 
for the poor, while *' heat, light, and mo- 
tive power, as well as water, might be con- 
<lucted through the streets at public ex- 
pense." Jle also sees free museums and 
vast libraries, and beholds flowers in the 
wilderness, while the air of his ideal world 
is filled with music. 

The universal panacea for all industrial 
ills tlius prescribed by the apostle of the 
"no land theory," has been used indis- 
criminately for all the sprains and aches 



PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF LAND. 79 

to wliich the flesh of labor is heir. More 
penetrating tlian '* Mustang Liniment" or 
" Wizard Oil," it l^as been more believed 
in than Col. Mulberry Sellers' mysterious 
" eye-water." 

Mr. George w^ould impose heavy bur- 
dens on the ownership of the soil. Sup- 
pose that under his theory a farmer, desir- 
ing to raise corn and hogs, should buy one 
hundred and sixty acres of land. Tliat 
land would be subjected to taxation suffi- 
cient to meet all purposes of' public rev- 
enue, and to a further taxation sufficient 
to give the people the wonderful things 
of which he speaks— fire, light, music, li- 
braries, etc., etc., etc. But would the farmer, 
thus burdened by rent, be able to sell 
his hogs and corn at ])rices now current? 
Would he not necessarily have to add the 
rent or taxes to the selling price of his prod- 
ucts, and thus shift the burden upon tlie 
buyer? Would a plan that excuses the 
owners of government bonds, and dia- 
monds, and luxurious paraphernalia from 
all taxation better the condition of the 



150 THE STUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

poor? Here is the chasm into which Mr. 
George's logic carries him, and from which 
no life-saving service of Ijieory can rescue 
him! 

That there have been special instances 
of grave wrongs in the speculative "cor- 
nering " of the land, everybody admits, 
and no one would object to a law 
prohibiting combinations among lanct 
owners to keep up prices. The theory 
of Mr. Hoiiier Reed, a student of the 
land question, is much wiser than that 
of Henry George. Mr. Reed holds that 
there should be a *' homestead unit " of 
IGO or 200 acres, and that this amount 
of land, if used for farming purposes, 
should be taxed so Hghtly as to be al- 
most exempt from burdens. Then he 
would levy ten times as high a tax on 
lands held for speculation. In this way 
he would encourage agricultural pursuits 
and discourage the speculative ownership 
of real estate. But Mr. Reed and Henry 
George labor under the mistake that there 
is a great scarcity of land in the United 



PKIVATE OWNERSHIP OF LAND. 81 

States, whereas, relatively, there is more 
accessible land here now than in 1850. 
Prior to the completion of transconti- 
nental railways, the land opened to white 
labor for agricultural purposes lay east of 
the Missouri River and north of Mason and 
Dixon's line. The West was the home of 
the buffalo and Indian, while the South 
was overcrowded with slave labor and not 
available for white workingmen. The 
completion of the Union Pacific Railroad 
brought millions of acres of rich land 
within a few days of New York harbor, 
and at prices that were a shock to the real 
estate markets of the world. 

Mr. George's theory falls little short of 
socialism, and as the Nun of Kenmare 
(Sister Frances M. Clare) has said, " The 
grand mistake lies in supposing that 
the equalization of land property will 
prove an equivalent to, or a substitution 
for, the equalization of capital. If all the 
capital in the world were equally divided 
to-morrow morning there would be ine- 
quality in twenty-four hours," and she not 
6 



82 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

inaptly adds, "The communist who says 
that all property is theft is more practi- 
cal." 

Dr. W. T. Harris, who is probably the 
foremost thinker to-day living, and whose 
opinions on questions of social science are 
authority, holds that the abolition of pri- 
vate property in land will " lead towards 
the degeneration of all higher spiritual 
interests and to the utter ruin of all that 
has been achieved, even in the realm of 
productive industry." His "Right of 
Property and The Ownership of Land" 
is a complete demonstration of the utter 
worthlessness of Mr. George's deductions. 

Let us take into consideration some facts 
and figures that lie at the foundation of 
the question, so that it may be determinod 
how great are the burdens imposed upon 
the masses — especially upon capital and 
labor — by land, or, as the new disciple 
puts it, by rent. 

By the census of 1880 the amount of all 
property in the United States was more 
than 43,000,000,000 of dollars, as shown 



PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF LAND. 83 

by the following carefully prepared table 
of items: — 

Billiofts of Dollars. 

Farms 10, 1 97 

Residence and business property 9,881 

Railroads (over-capitalized estimate) 5,536 

Live Stock and farming implements ...;.. 2,406 
Stock of production on hand, agricultural 

and manufacturing 6, 160 

Churches, Schools, Asylums and public 

buildings 2,000 

Household furniture 5,000 

Telegraphs, shipping and canals 419 

Mines, quarries, oil wells and j^ average 

product 781 

Bullion 612 

Miscellaneous 650 

Total 43,642,000,000 

Residence and business property arc put 
at little less value than farms. " The cen- 
sus gives no clue," says Dr. Harris, "as to 
the relative value of land and buildinp-s. 
It would be certain, however, that the land 
could not exceed in value 20,000,000,000, 
as that is the total value of all real estate." 

In Massachusetts complete assessment 
rolls, making allowances for the differ- 
ences between true and assessed valua- 



84 



THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 



tions, show that land is 44 per cent, and 
buildings 56 per cent, of the assessed value 
of real estate. 

It is estimated from the census returns 
and other data, that the land values of 
the Eastern and Middle States are 2,948,- 
000,000, and the value of buildings is 
3,766,000,000. 

The following carefully prepared table 
shows the values for the entire country: — 





Ratio of 
Build- 
ings to 
Land. 


Buildin's 
Millions. 


Land. 
Millions. 




5<M4 
40-00 
40-60 


83 766 
671 

1 857 


83 766 




671 


Western States and Territories. 


1 X51 


Total 




^ -iW 


m '29 1 







Mulhall, in his invaluable " Dictionary 
of Statistics," estimates land and forest 
of the United States at $10,750,000,000, 
while Dr. Harris puts the true valuation 
of buildings, lots, and farms at $10,000,- 
000,000, calling the true value 65 per cent, 
of the assessed value. He says: " Count- 
ing rent at 4 per cent on the actual val- 



PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF LAND. 85 

uation (which would be 6.1 per cent, on 
assessed value), we have the sum of $400,- 
000,000 as the total rental of land in the 
United States. Four per cent, is a larger 
average rent than land brings in, because 
land owners raise prices on land when it 
produces more than 3 per cent, after pay- 
ing taxes." 

He then shows that for a population of 
50,000,000 (census 1880) the ground rent 
is $8 apiece per year, or two and one-lifth 
cents per day, not a distressingly large 
part of the forty cents per day, which is 
the average earnings per capita of the 
population. According to Mr. Atkinson, 
the statistician, the average income per 
capita, is fifty-five cents.* This gives the 
ground rent of each person as amount- 
ing to one twenty-fifth of his average 
earnings. By Dr. Harris' estimate it is 
one-eighteenth. Even in Great Britain 
and Ireland, ruled by landlords, the aver- 



*NoTE. — Dr. Harris estimates our annual production 
at $7,300,000,000, but IVIulhall's estimate is $7,100,- 
000,000. 



86 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

age rent per inhabitant is shown to be 
two and one-half cents per day. 

As completely and clearly dissipating 
Henry George's statement that land be- 
comes so valuable that the masses must 
ever be oppressed, it is demonstrated tliat 
the relative increase of land in the United 
Kingdom in the thirty years from 1850 
to 1880 was 23 per cent. During the 
same period houses gained 138 per cent, 
in aggregate value.* In tlie United States, 
as Iieretofore shown, the prices of Eastern 
farm lands have been kept down by com- 
petition witli the vast acres in the tar 
West, which railroads liave made avail- 
able for use. In this connection the evils 
of the railway system, as pointed out in 



*Laad in 1801 was 990 millions sterling and in 1882 
18S0 millions sterling, hardly doubling in 80 year^ ; 
but the value of houses increased from 30G millions to 
2280 millions, more than seven times the amount, 
The relative increase in incomes, from manufactures, 
mercantile employments, and professions (in which 
the incomes have more than douV)led) is thus shown : 
1850 1800 1870 1880 

100 125 174 228 



PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF LAND. 87 

the chapter on railroads, are seen to be a 
menace to the welfare of the farmer, and 
to partly prevent the West and South 
from competing with the East. The far- 
mers of distant regions are charged such 
extortionate freight rates that their pro- 
ducts are sometimes hardly worth ship- 
ping.* 

Recurring to the ground rent, seen to 
be two and one-fifth cents per day, let me 
ask whether this sum is so great as to be 
a burden to the masses? The net earn- 
ings of the country's railroads for 1884 
were $336,911,884, a sum equal to about 
nine per cent, of their cost, and while the 
true value of the roads is but half as great 
a sum as the true value of the land of the 
United States, their earnings amounted 
to nearly as much. Let any fair minded 



*NoTE. — Capital has its hand on the throat of land 
property, contrary to the theory of Mr. George, who 
supposes that land has the advantage over capital and 
labor. Capital frees labor from tyranny of land and 
the present ratio of land to the total wealth of the 
United States is about 1 to 4^. — Harris. 



88 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

person here behold that the wastes and 
burdens represented in the railway earn- 
ings do not fall directly on the entire pop- 
ulation, but chiefly on the producers of 
agricultural and manufacturing products. 
Great as are the abuses of our railway 
system, the railroads have prevented build- 
ing sites from running to ruinous figures, 
for they have brought the central lot into 
competition with suburban lands. The 
cable car, the elevated railway, the local 
trains, in all the great suburbs unite the 
crowded mart and the quiet country home. 
"This very god Steam," as Emerson calls 
it, though in bad company with greedy 
barons and tormented by infinite abuses, 
stands as a safeguard between the people 
and Mr. George's imaginary Gorgon. Mr. 
George's intentions are good enough. He 
would induce the poor to go on farms, but 
he forgets that tliere are too many farmers 
now, for with our restricted home markets 
prices are low, and the average earnings of 
farmers is but $22.29 per month, when 
the average of all is $34.80. 



PRIVATJ5 OWNERSHIP OF LAND. 89 

Mr. Mallock lias made a strong point 
against the single tax theory. He says, in 
his " Property and Progress," that rents 
would not become less under the State 
landlord plan. He then asks how Mr. 
George's plan can help the poor. How 
would the State as a landlord benefit men 
who wished for land in a district already 
occupied, or men too poor to pay any rent 
at all. If all the land .on a given street 
were occupied, the street would be barred 
to any new tradesman; nor would the fact 
of the street being really national prop- 
erty give him any more right to the use 
of it than if it were wholly another citi- 
zen's land under the present system. 
And how would the poor be benefited? 
If a man cannot pay his heavy ground 
rent to the State in the form of an enor- 
mous tax, then the State will evict him as 
quickly as would a private landlord. 

Suppose that a man rents a tract of land 
from the State and when a city grows up 
it raises in value. How will the State's 
tenant be situated now? He cannot be 



90 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

evicted by the State, and he cannot have 
his rent raised on what are his own im- 
provements. Though he pays the State 
no more for liis land than before he in- 
duced people to build a town on it, he 
knows that others would pay him more, 
and there is nothing to prevent him from 
holding the land on speculation. He 
might sub-let it. But Mr. George an- 
swers that the liighest bidder gets the land. 
But a piece of land is not in the market 
at any given moment. When it is knocked 
down to a buyer he cannot be ousted at 
the pleasure of the State. Otherwise, if 
any Naboth at any moment might have 
his vineyard bought over his head by any 
speculating Ahab, the system would de- 
stroy all improvements and result in the 
triumph of the money power in the end.* 



* Laud iavestmeuts are not so profitable as invest- 
ments in trade with equal business sagacity. By the 
year 1912 the $24 paid for Manhattan Island in 1612, 
at 6 per cent, compound interest for the 300 years in- 
terveninsf, would come to over $800,000,000, a sum 
quite equal to the value of all the land in New York 
City in 1912, judging from its present price and rate 
of iacrease. — Harris. 



PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF LAND. 91 

In 1850, Great Britain and Ireland supported in 
whole or part 1,308,000 paupers (one in twenty-one of 
the population) ; in 1860, only 973,000. In 1880, the 
total number of paupers had fallen to 1,016,000. 
The poor rates amounted to nearly one per cent, in 
1870, but only to .84 in 1880. 

Population has increased unprecedentedly since the 
epoch of labor-saving machines; but means of subsist- 
ence have increased in a far greater ratio than popu- 
lation, — Harris. 

The most fertile lands are the last to be occupied, 
nay, are not occupied yet because human combina 
tion and the application of machinery is not able 
to cope with them. Witness the entire Amazon River 
ba in, two-thirds as large as all Europe, and as yet 
scarcely any of it subdued for agricultural uses. Its 
vegetable growth is so luxuriant that all higher ani- 
mal life is utterly dwarfed by its over-powering pres- 
ence. Only reptiles, etc., . . . can hold their 
own against such vegetable life. Mechanical inven- 
tion will some day tame the Amazon Valley and pro- 
duce from it ten times as much food as is to-day pro- 
duced on the entire earth. — Harris. 

Thorold Rogers shows us that in England the soil 
has increased in fertility, so that four bushels of wheat 
are now produced where only one was raised two 
hundred years ago. Beef cattle now weigh 1,200 
pounds, instead of 400 pounds as then. A sheep 
yields seven to nine pounds of wool where it yielded 
only one pound of very inferior quality, half hair, 
half wool. — Harris, 



92 THk STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

While statistics prove that the wealth of the country 
is increasing much faster than the population, it is a 
favorite argument > f certain representatives of capital 
that the laborer is getting all he can expect under the 
natural order of things. This statement is justified 
by the argument of Malthus, long since called the 
Malthusian theory, namely, that population increases 
faster than wealth; that the earth does not produce 
enough to allow an increase of wages. The theory is 
neither proved by experience, accepted by represent- 
ative economists, nor confirm id by the better reason- 
ing ; because everything that furnishes man food and 
raiment has the power to increase many fold, while 
population doubles on the average but once in every 
twenty five years, and by some authorities once in 
twenty-nine years. Aside from this, there are other 
forms of wealth that increase at a high rate, especi lly 
since the introduction of labor-saving machinery, by 
which in many instances, one man does the work for- 
merly accomplished by a hundred. Machinery annu- 
ally adds millions to the wealth of the United States. 

It is sometimes said that famines in Ireland and 
India weie caused "by the pressure of . population on 
subsistence," and that these instances confirm the 
Malthusian theory. It is strange that such citations 
should ever be made in view of the fact that in every 
great famine in these countries, the crops of the season 
were sufficient to more than have supported the mill- 
ions who starved. The very roads of Ireland, over 
which loads of food guarded by soldiers were carried, 
to be exported to English owners, were crowded with 



PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OP LAND. 93 

men, women, and children, dying from starvation, 
while trenches along the road- ways were filled with 
the dead. Extortion, misrule, criminal disregard of 
the suffering of others, and not the poverty of nature, 
caused the death of millions in those famines. Again, 
population is almost a fixed quantity, ebbing here and 
flowing there, but from the earliest ages averaging in 
the aggregate about the same. — Author. 

Again I urge the importance o" Dr. W. T. Harris' 
pamphlet, " The Right of Property and the Ownership 
of Land. " It is published by Cupples, Hurd & Co., 
Boston. See the following from it: — 

" The function of industry in the perfection of man 
becomes clear when we consider the true nature of 
property. 

" Property is the means for transferring the products 
of the will of the individual to the raci>, and at the 
same time the means of his participation in the prod- 
ucts of the race. Human labor cannot be stored up 
and transferred except in the form of property. A 
thing becomes property when (a) it is held in posses- 
sion by one individual or a company of individuals; 
{b) and that possession is recognized, confirmed, and 
defended by the comTnunity. 

*' Take away private property and each one's indi- 
viduality, as manifested in his private wants, gets in 
the way of the individuality of everyone else. Uni- 
versal collision results in the necessity of the subju- 
gation of all wills in the community to one will; hence 
arises despotic absolutism as the lowest and rudest 
form of rational society, the relation of master and 
Slave. 



94 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

"The possession of private property makes posiible 
the exercise of many wills in th,^ community, without 
collision with each other. It is a greater invention 
than the discovery of the primitive arts of fire and 
metallurgy. It is the discovery of the possibility of 
human freedom. 

"With private property in land there is secured a 
province within which the individual becomes sov- 
ereign. Where the land is the property of the com- 
munity, each one's will in some degree lacks a sphere 
in which it is sovereign. Bat when the individual ob- 
tains the perfect sovereignty over his own land, then 
the will of the community does not share with him 
nor subordinate him any longer, but re-enforces his 
will. 

*' If the present national and local taxes were all 
assessed on land, land could not avoid the taxes by be- 
coming cheap. If the value of the land sank to five 
l)er cent, of its present value, the Government would 
simply be obliged on Mr. George's plan to raise the 
rate of taxation to twenty times the rate before 
assessed, and thus make it pay every year 150 per 
cent, of its total value, in order to get the requisite 
amount of revenue that it collects at present. There 
couUl be no question of collecting larger revenues than 
at present — revenues that would supply music and 
dancing, balls, theatres, shooting galleries, gymna- 
siums, and such institutions for public benefit as Mr. 
George proposes, in addition to those furnished now — 
because the taxation of 1 iid sufficient to produce the 
present revenue would be seven and one-half per cent. 



PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OP LAND. 95 

on its present valuation, and this alone would be 
sufficient to crush farmers completely. 

** In conclusion let us ask, in what way would the 
new plan of collecting taxes help the poor ? At first 
there would be no diminution in the amount of rent 
paid for houses. After a little while, however, the rent 
of the largest and most expensive houses in the center 
of cities would fall somewhat, because only the land 
and not the building is to be taxed. But the rent of 
small cottages and cheap tenement houses would 
greatly increase as a consequence of the attempt of 
land-owners to recover a portion of the tax that 
would fall with undue weight on their property. The 
consequence would be that the poor would be far 
worse oflF than now as regards the rent of dwellings. 
They would pay relatively more than the rich." 



CHAPTER V. 
REVOLUTIONARY THEORIES. 

The American Form of Government Upheld— Thb 
Principles of Socialism Tested — The Red Flag 
Army's Ill-Considered Demands — A Reason for 
Rich and Poor — Anarchy and its Errors — 
Other Considerations. 

At the outset let me say that the enemies 
of social order need not expect to find 
comfort in these pages. I believe that any 
government that denies the right of its 
citizens to gain wealth by private industry, 
in proper vocations, not only retards the 
normal development of production by its 
tyranny, but also seriously dwarfs the de- 
velopment of strong character and strikes 
down one of the greatest bulwarks of edu- 
cation — the school of experience. Com- 
petition in trade may be so directed by 
wise laws as to prevent its becoming a 
menace to the welfare of the masses. 
Capital should, in all its united and indi- 
(96) 



REVOLUTIONARY THEORIES. 97 

vidual activities, be placed under whole- 
some laws, and so directed that no aggre- 
gations of wealth wield autocratic and un- 
bridled power. 

There can be no well-grounded com- 
plaint, as Lyman Abbott has so aptly illus- 
trated, because A is worth $100,000 while 
B is not worth $100, if the inequalities of 
their savings are proportioned to the in- 
equalities of the services which they ren- 
dered to society, and of their frugality, 
sagacity, etc., etc.* Their respective abil- 
ities, training, and industry, might ac- 
count for many of the disparities of their 
situations in life. 

But socialism ignores all of these natu- 
ral differences and proposes to overthrow 
the rewards of individual merit and 
measure all men's wealth by public sched- 
ule. Its application would wipe out all 
natural differences of character, annul all 
the hivings of culture, and confine weak 
and strong in one sphere. 

*NoTE. — See this more fully treated in Chapter 
VIII, where profit-sharing is explained. 



98 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

Can there be any doubt that any scheme 
that gives the government entire control 
of industries would essentially destroy the 
freedom of individuals ? What would be- 
come, as Tlieodore Woolsey asks, in his 
"Communism and Socialism," of the 
power of rising by enterprise, soundness 
of judgment, unbounded energy, and 
other qualities, wliieh not only aid the in- 
dividual in his advancement, but contrib- 
ute to the improvement of general society? 

Is it not true that when the individual 
is robbed of his earnings by the state he is 
retarded in his power of surpassing the 
achievements of the average man? If the 
oak takes root among the rocks and grows 
strong in the storm, why does not the 
same discipline make men strong? If the 
state does all the managing, is responsi- 
ble for all the failures and successes, what 
becomes of the schooling of action as seen 
in the storm of deeds? 

Under socialism, as defined by its lead- 
ers, society is to become a vast partner- 
ship and individual wealth is to cease. 



REVOLUTIONARY THEORIES. 99 

Weitling says that there mast be a ' 'de- 
struction of the existing state organiza- 
tion. " Bakunin the anarchist, Lassalle, 
H^^ndman, Herr Liebnect and others are 
not less radical in their demands for a 
reformation, and in their remedies for ex- 
isting evils. Adolf Held wants social- 
ism "to subordinate the individual will to 
the community." Janet says that social- 
ism teaches that the state has the right to 
correct the inequality of wealth which ex- 
ists among men and to legally establish a 
balance by taking from those who have 
too much in order to give to those who 
have not enough." In the same tone 
Laveleye "aims at introducing greater 
equality in social conditions." Karl Marx, 
Dr. Aveling, Fourier, and Robert Owen 
also ask for the destruction of competition 
and the substitution of co-operation under 
state direction, in the production of wealth, 
while others define all private property as 
theft 

Aside from the dismal results of social- 
ism, it would not reach the goal pictured 



100 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

by the leaders. It would level all men to 
an average — that of mediocrity — and de- 
stroy those stirring incentives to individual 
effort which have made glorious the pages 
of every civilized nation's history. It 
would also fail to give the laboring men 
of the United States a larger share than 
they now get, of the annual production. 

Let us take an inventory of men's 
earnings and then spread the socialistic 
feast before the laborer. Once more to 
that bible of facts, the census reports! 

As shown by the tables of Mr. Joseph 
Nimmo, chief of the Bureau of Statistics, 
the value of the annual products of the 
United States is $7,300,000,000, or forty 
cents a day to each inhabitant. Mulhall, 
a careful compiler of statistics, who is 
most clear-headed in his estimates,* puts 
the annual product of the United States 
at $7,100,000,000, which would reduce the 
average income a fraction. At forty cents 
per day as the share of each inhabitant, 



*NoTE. — See his " History of Prices." See also 
Chapter IV, of this book. 



REVOLUTIONARY THEORIES. 101 

each person engaged in business* wonld 
earn $1.85 daily, since every employed 
person supports two and nine-tenths per- 
sons. This sum (which is $34.80 per 
month) would be- the earnings of each 
laborer if production were annually dis- 
tributed equally, and if nothing went to 
capital as interest, nothing to land as rent, 
and nothing for supervision or superior 
skill. [The estimate is that of Dr. W. T. 
Harris, heretofore quoted]. The forego- 
ing division is substantially the distribu- 
tion demanded by socialists, and anarch- 
ists also, according to Proudhon, Janet, 
Aveling and others. 



*See Appendix, and turn t© table showing the busi- 
ness population of the United States. It is not prob- 
able that the production would be so great if men were 
not spurred on to activity' by the stern necessities as 
well as the prizes of life. Under the present system 
every man has a hope that he may some day draw some 
of life's prizes. If fed by the government, as blanket 
Indians of the plains are cared for, many men would 
not work at all. The opportunities of unequal wealth 
are needful to encourage the strongest and stimulate 
the spirit of venture that makes possible new con- 
quests. 



102 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

Dr. W. T. Harris not inaptly says, in 
this connection : "Inasmuch as skilled 
labor receives as wages from $2.00 to $4.00 
per day in most of the States, while com- 
mon laborers in manufacturing establish- 
ments receive $1.25 to $1.50, the wages 
of labor in the manufacturing and me- 
chanical industries is already above tlie 
average received by all, rich and poor, to 
the extent of from lifteen cents to $2.G5 
per day." 

The real problem is, therefore, not so 
broad as socialists state it, nor is it to be 
solved by the revolutionists. The ques- 
tion is how to place capital and labor, un- 
der the present system of private enter- 
prise, on a basis that will insure to each 
peace and fair prosperity. All attempts 
to place worth and worthlessness on tlie 
level of comnuinism will prove unpopular 
in this country. Industry must be left 
free to be fostered by private enterprise, 
under wise laws, and while the exigency 
has arisen in some cases for the sovereign 
to step m between rapacious capital and 



REVOLUTIONARY THEORIES. 103 

hungry labor, under the broad duty im- 
plied in " the welfare of the people," the 
dawn of the day of socialism is not near. 
There are some fields in which the gov- 
ernment might well interfere for the w^el- 
fare of the people and the better develop- 
ment of the country, but not in most of 
the pursuits now conducted by individual 
enterprise.* It may be admitted that 
there is a certain socialistic tendency in all 
modern governments. Whenever funds 
are expended for the poor, and whenever 
sovereignty steps in to direct vast enter- 
prises, there is to that extent socialism. 
To such a degree as attempted by most 
governments the tendency does no harm. 
Our post-office system is socialistic, and 
so are most police regulations under the 
police power of the state, such as boards 
of health. The power of eminent domain 
might also be classified in the same way. 

*NoTE. — See chapter on railways, where this idea is 
enlarged. 

In all ages of the world of which we have any rec- 
ord there have been attempts to reconstruct society 



104 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

on a socialistic basis. Plato advocated a mild form of 
socialism. 

Socialists are all agreed, under whatever name they 
are known, that socialism alone can give all men a fair 
opportunity in the world, and that under the present 
system of individualism, or " one-sided freedom, ' the 
tendency of civilization is to oppress the poor and bring 
the working classes under subjection so that they will 
finally become precarious wage workers. There is no 
very close distinction between communism and so- 
cialism. Both aim to deliver the working people from 
what they term the subjection of capital. They 
want to "terminate the divorce of the workers from 
the natural sources of subsistence and of culture." 
This principle thus stated by the "Encyclopedia 
Britannica," seems common to all forms of socialism. 

Sir Thomas More's " Utopia," in 1516, was a social- 
istic idea. Saint Simon, Robert Owen, and Fourier, 
all wrote on socialism and also tried to establish ideal 
colonies. Their schemes failed, the members quar- 
reled, and the influence of their various movements 
was, except in a theoretical way, short lived. Robert 
Owen laid his scheme before the House of Commons 
in 1817. The speculations of Saint Simon took a 
definite direction the same year. 

The acknowledged father of anarchism is Proudhon, 
but the greatest apostle of the system was Michael 
Bakunin, a Russian, born in 1814. The anarchists 
would reach equality of condition by abolishing " all 
legislation, all authority, all influence, privileged, 
patented, official and legal. " They demand bread for 



REVOLUTIONARY THEORIES. 105 

all, science for all, work for all. Anarchism is classed 
with socialism, or as a branch of it, by the best writ- 
t rs. See ' * Encyclopedia Britannica. " 

Herbert Spencer aptly says of the socialists: — 
"Impressed with the miseries existing under our 
present social arrangements, and not regarding these 
miseries as caused by the ill-working of a human nature 
but partially adapted to the social state, they imagine 
them to be at once curable by this or that re-arrange- 
ment. Yet, even did their plans succeed, it could 
only be by substituting one kind of evil for another, 
A little deliberate thought would show that under 
their proposed arrangements their liberties must be sur- 
rendered iu proportion as their material welfares were 
cared for. For no form of co-operation, small or great, 
can be carried on without regulation and an implied 
subniission to the regulating agencies. Even one of 
their owq organizations for effecting social changes 
yields them proof. It is compelled to have its coun- 
cils, its local and general officers, its authoritative 
leaders, who must be obeyed under penalty of con- 
fusion and failure." 

The great thinker goes on at some length to show 
how grumbling and restiveness would grow, and com- 
plaints of tyranny increase. One's only escape from 
the slavery, would be to leave the country. See his 
article in Popular Science Montlily for April, 1884. 
The key note is struck when Mr, Spencer says: " The 
welfare of a society and the justice of its arrangements 
are at bottom dependent on the characters of its 
members ; and improvement in neither can take place 



106 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

without that improvement in character which results 
from carrying on peaceful industry under the restraints 
imposed by an orderly social life. The belief, not 
only of the socialists, but also of those so-called liber- 
als who are diligently preparing the way for them, is 
that by due skill an ill-working humanity may be 
fr.imed into well-working institutions. It is a delu- 
sion. The defective natures of citizens will show 
themselves in the bad-acting of whatever social struct- 
ures they are arranged into. There is no political al- 
chemy by which you can get golden conduct out of 
leaden instincts." 

The Russian village community, (known as the 
"MIE,") is a practical example of socialism. It is 
said that so poor are the peasants that they wear a 
single leather suit of clothing for twelve years, day 
and night. They earn from four to six cents per day^ 
and the spirit of individualism is crushed out and 
rendered subordinate to the will of the whole commun- 
ity as expressed by the .^darosta or village elder chosen 
by the village assemblies. The noblest and most ad- 
venturous men are banished to Siberia or sent to the 
army for life. It is one of tlie most backward coun- 
tries in the world, and its socialistic civilization, as 
seen in village communities, is but little above the 
condition of those wandering nomads who burned new 
forests to prepare grain lields, and then abandoned 
the fields for another forest. In J 60 1 the Czar ter- 
minated the custom by fixing the peasants to the soil 
as serfs, and the commuoism of the village was substi- 
tuted. 



REVOLUTIONARY THEORIES. 107 

The "Encyclopedia Britannica" says: The whole of 
the land occupied by a Russian village, — whoever be 
the landlord recognized by law, — is considered as be- 
longing to the village community as a whole, the sep- 
arate members of the community having only the 
right of temporary possesssion of such part of the 
common property as allowed to them by the Mir, in 
proportion to their working power. 



CHAPTER VI. 

MODERN TRUSTS. 

'A Few Simple Statements as to What They Ark 
AND How TniiY Exist— Their Ill^ioality as Long 
Ago as the Time of Lord Cork. 

It is an old maxim of economists that 
where combination is possible competition 
is impossible. In England where there 
were formerly 262 railway companies but 
eleven now remain, and in the United 
States the large roads have swallowed up 
the small ones. It seems to be a law of 
nature that the strong of all creatures de- 
vour the weak. The monopoly of talons 
and beak over the inoffensive flesh of an- 
imals is not greater than that power of 
cunning that great combinations of capi- 
tal wield over the small and weak. In the 
railways of the world this law has had 
signal illustration — in France, where six 
companies ran all the others out, and as 
before cited, in England, and in America. 
(108) 



MODERN TRUSTS. 109 

In trade similar combinations have now 
come in to feed upon the less powerful 
ones. In California one cracker company 
about runs the business, so in fruit-can- 
ning interests. In Pennsylvania coal and 
oil monopolies ruthlessly rob the masses, 
and in every state are examples of this 
oppression. Hon. William W. Cook gives 
a vivid picture of these evils. ^He says: — 

"During the past fifteen years there has 
been a rapid growth of manufactories. 
This growth has extended into all branches 
of manufacturing business. It has created 
competition, caused an overproduction, 
and reduced prices frequently below the 
cost of the article produced. Several 
years ago it became evident to manu- 
facturers that they must pursue one of two 
courses. They had to continue the war of 
prices until the weaker concerns went to 
the wall, and a few large establishments 
arose on their ruins, or they had to com- 
bine, limit production, and control prices. 
The latter plan was adopted. 

" Another cause was at work. A great 



110 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

monopoly in oil had arisen and prospered. 
It had amassed millions of money. It 
had practically crushed out all competi- 
tion. It had succeeded beyond the dreams 
even of those who originated it. It had 
worked out a plan and policy of organiza- 
tion. It was 'a success/ and the mode of 
combination which first succeeded in the 
Standard Oil Trust, and in its offspring, 
the American Cotton Oil Trust, set an ex- 
ample for manufacturers, which they were 
not slow to follow. 

** There have been various attempts o^ 
the manufacturers to combine. The first 
plan was by contracts, whereby all the 
parties were to sell at a fixed price or 
through a common agent. Five years 
ago these contracts existed in many 
branches of business. They corresponded 
in principle and purpose to the railroad 
Spools,' but, like them, they were a failure. 
The courts would not sustain or enforce 
them, and the members would not live up 
to them. They were short lived. The 
parties would not act in good faith. Se- 



MODERN TRUSTS. Ill 

cret breaches were made, or the whole 
agreement was openly repudiated. They 
fell to pieces. Self-interest was the onl}'- co- 
hesive bond, and self-interest sooner or 
later induced one or more to abandon and 
compete with the combination 'pool.' 

''It became evident that a stronger 
method of effecting a combination must 
be found. It must be a method wliicli 
would bind fast all who once entered into 
it. It must take the management and 
ownership of the business out of the 
hands of the various discordant elements 
which constituted the combination. It 
must be based, not on a moral obligation 
or mere agreement, but on an absolute 
right of property, possession, and owner- 
ship, vested in the combination itself. 
The old method of combination had failed 
because it required the continuous assent 
of its numerous members. The new com- 
bination could succeed only by depriving 
the parties of the power to withdraw 
their assent. A scheme that would fulfill 
these requisites was not easy to discover, 



112 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

but it was found. It exists in the modern 
'Trust.' 

" A * Trust ' is a combination of many 
competing concerns under one manage- 
ment, which thereby reduces the cost, reg- 
ulates the amount of production, and in- 
creases the price for which the article is 
sold. It is either a monopoly or an en- 
deavor to establish a monopoly. Its pur- 
pose is to make larger profits by decreasing 
cost, limiting production, and increasing 
the price to the consumer. This is ac- 
complished by presenting to competitors 
the alternative of joining the ' Trust' or 
being crushed out. Its organization is in- 
tricate, secret, and subtle. It is a master- 
piece of modern ingenuity and fertility of 
resource It is a product of the highest 
order of business talent and executive 
ability. It is at once a monument to 
American genius and a symbol of Ameri- 
can rapacity. 

**The term 'Trust' is popularly applied 
to all methods of effecting a combination 
in trade. It is used to designate not only 



MODERN TRUSTS. 113 

the most recent development and approved 
method of forming the combination, but 
also the primitive and crude contracts 
called 'pools.'" 

And yet, notwithstanding the existence 
of all these trusts in the United States, 
the law clearly holds that combinations to 
restrict production, or to prevent compe- 
tition, or to regulate prices, are illegal and 
void. The law which guards public inter- 
ests declares that the welfare of the State 
demands that parties in such combinations 
shall have no standing in the courts. 
Lord Goke, that unfailing source of com- 
mon law authority, said that such monop- 
olies led to three disastrous results : an in- 
crease in price, a decrease in quality, and 
the impoverishment of artisans and oth- 
ers. 

But aside from the legal view there is 
an important fact to be considered in con- 
nection with trusts. There is no other 
principal to sustain them than that which 
rests upon brute force of money and the 
cunning of those who combine. It is the 

8 



114 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

argument that might is right, and on that 
principle old tyrants ruled their slaves. 
The question is, how long will the Amer- 
ican people stand such tyranny ? * These 
enormous trusts have already drawn with- 



*As a sample, the following sugar trust membership 
roll will give an idea of the extent of the combination 
in that line alone , — 

THE SUGAR TRUST AGREEMENT. 

-I>EED.- 

THE SUGAR REFINERIES COMPANY. 

The undersigned, namely: 

Havemeyer & Elder, 

The De Castro & Donnbr Sugar Refining Com- 
pany, 

F. 0. Matthiessen & Wkichbrs Sugar Refining 
Company, 

Havemeyer Sugar Refining Company, 

Brooklyn Sugar Refining Company, 

The firm of Dick & Meyer, 

The firm of Moller, Sierck & Company, 

North River Sugar Refining Company, 

The firm of Oxnard Brothers, 

The Standard Sugar Refinery, 

The Bay State Sugar Refinery, 

The Boston Sugar Refining Company, 

The Continental Sugab Refinbby, 
and 

The Reverb Sugar Rsvineky, 



MODERN TRUSTS. 115 

in their awful grasp a large part of the 
business of the country, as will be seen by 
a list of the various business enterprises 
embraced in trusts, to be found in the ap- 
pendix of this volume. As at present or- 
ganized these institutions defy alike press, 
legislatures, courts, and people. 



CHAPTER VII. 
THE FUTURE OF LABOR. 

Thoughts on the Power of Man and the Re- 
sources OF Nature — Conquering the Elements 
BY Combination of Natural Forces. — Labor- 
Saving Machinery and the Re- adjustment of 
Human Vocations. — Culture Demanded of Fut- 
ure Toilers 

If there is one plain lesson to be drawn 
from the history of the past, a conclusion 
that cannot be forgotten, it is that culture 
liberates men from manual toil. The 
whole trend of civilization shows that as 
man has learned how to conquer nature 
by invention he has himself been freed 
from irksome toil. Emerson forcibly ex- 
presses the thought in his remarkable es- 
say on " Civilization," where he says : — 

" The farmer had much ill-temper, la- 
ziness, and shirking to endure from his 
hand sawyers, until one day he bethought 
him to put his saw-mill on the edge of a 
water-fall; and the river never tires of 

(116) 



THE FUTURE OF LABOR. 117 

turning his wheel. ... I admire 
still more than the saw-mill the skill 
which, on the seashore, makes the tides 
drive the wheels and grind corn, and 
which thus engages the assistance of the 
moon, like a hired hand, to grind, and 
wind, and pump, and saw, and split stone, 
and roll iron. Now that is the wisdom of 
man, in every instance of his labor, to 
hitch his wagon to a star, and see his 
chore done by the gods themselves. That 
is the way we are strong, by borrowing 
the might of the elements. The forces of 
steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, 
wind, fire, serve us day by day, and cost 
us nothing." 

Who that has beheld the marvelous 
achievements of machinery in supplant- 
ing wage workers in the mechanic arts 
has not asked, " What is to be the out- 
come ? What will become of men when 
machines do the work of production and 
drive workmen from the shops ? "* 



*See Chapter II, where it is shown that the increased 
production has made possible the employment of the 



118 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

The history of human vocations dates 
back to a time when the majority were 
hunters or fishermen, and when ninety- 
nine per cent, of the male population was 
required in those active pursuits whose 
object was the obtaining of food and rai- 
ment. Even before the race had emerged 
from the condition of mere cave-dwellers 
the barbaric women attended their young 
while the savage men were busy in their 
simple work-day world, getting the rude 
necessaries of life. In those early times 
men died leaving no wealth for distribu- 
tion among their kin. As the Sage of Con- 
cord forcibl}^ says, " A man in a cave or in 
a camp, a nomad, will die with no more 
estate than the wolf or the horse leaves. 
But so simple a labor as a house being 
achieved, his enemies are kept at bay. 
He is safe from the teeth of wild animals, 
from frost, sunstroke, and weather; and 
fine faculties begin to yield their fine har- 



vast increase of population and even raised their scale 
of wages. Exact figures are given in the chapter. 



THE FUTURE OP LABOR. 119 

vest. Invention and art are born, man- 
ners and social beauty and delight." 

Here is the gleam of light that dawns 
and gives a hint that new pursuits will be 
called forth as new ages come. The army 
of progress is even to-day making drafts 
for more men and women to minister to 
the wants of culture. Girls and women 
now have opened to them scores of fields 
of industry that a few decades ago were 
unknown. Behold a quarter of a mil- 
lion operators of type-writers ! See the 
inventor of the telephone giving employ- 
ment to hundreds of thousands, and so on 
through the entire list of human inven- 
tions.* 



*NoTE.— In his report for 1886, Charles F. Peck, 
Labor Commissioner of New York, says: — 

"One of the notable features in this age of ma- 
chinery is the subdivision of labor, and this condition 
reaets on our workers. Nor is this confined to labor, 
for there is a constant drift towards specialization in 
all departments of human action. The great man in 
one branch of knowledge may be small enough in 
another. So with trades. And in this lies one of the 
obstacles to steady and remunerativ^e employment. 



120 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

There are thousands in the community 
whose pursuits are made obsolete by the 

The watch trade is a familiar instance. All the differ- 
ent parts of a watch are produced by different persons, 
and with such intinitesimal minuteness and absolute 
exactness that they can be fitted or replaced almost at 
hap-hazard by the expert finisher. Not only, however, 
in the fine and delicate minuti® of a watch is this sub- 
division met; it is found in coarser articles. The sub- 
division of labor in such a common-place manufacture aa 
that of boots and shoes is mentioned elsewhere, and 
truth, though it be, seems almost incredible. Every- 
where we encounter this modern peculiarity, the result 
of machinery. In past times the blacksmith must have 
been a wonderful artist, he fabricated everything 
from a nail to a sword, or an ornamental bit of fine 
metal work. To-day these items are all spread abroad 
into fifty or a hundred different callings. This sub- 
division of labor, while it simplifies products, involves 
the disadvantage of glutted markets and lack of em- 
ployment. It used to be said that the French work- 
man was better than the English workman in the 
facility with which he could turn round and do good 
work in two or three trades, whereas the bold Briton 
was tied to one. Hence the value of an extension of 
industries and increased facilities for education and 
employment, industries that shall involve the quality 
of art and the cultivation of taste by which, as is 
shown elsewhere, the industrial populations of Europe 
have met the difficulties of ' hard times,' whereas 



THE FUTURE OP LABOR. 121 

skill of invention, which not only sub- 
divides trades, but calls into being new and 
complex callings. The citizen whose in- 
genuity and education are so limited that 
he cannot make himself useful in new 
trades when his own is supplanted by iron 
fingers, and trained arms, and the spindles 
of machinery, must work at a continually 
increasing disadvantage. The competition 
of the new age is as heartless as the iron 
and steel of which the machines are made. 
The only friend of the laborer in such a 
plight is the fertility of his own resources, 
the versatility of his brain. He must 
have tact to engage, on short notice, in 
some higher pursuit or fall back upon 
friends or public charity for support. To 
follow the obsolete trade would be as un- 
remunerative as the work of the sewing 
woman who starves in a garret while a 



they would otherwise have been overwhelmed. In- 
creased methods of employment result in a more gen- 
eral diffusion of products and labor earnings." 

See Dr. Harris' table of the evolution of vocations, 
in Appendix. 



122 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

machine laborer makes more and better 
stitches in a few hours than she can make 
in a week ; or, like the backwoodsman try- 
ing to compete, by aid of a team of oxen, 
with a locomotive. And yet there are 
workingmen who occasionally rise up in 
wrath and demolish harvesting machines 
that reap and bind the grain, and there 
are printers who would sweep from the 
face of the earth every type-setting ma- 
chine; and yet to retrograde to the old 
era of wooden ploughs and crude utensils 
in the mechanic arts, would be the height 
of folly. For the race to return to its 
childhood would be dear compensation 
for the temporary inconvenience and 
even penury of the minority. The rem- 
edy is in a better brain which supplants 
hand labor, and directs or even invents 
the machine which does the drudgery.* 



* In this connection it is interesting to see what uses 
are being made of magnetism in the great steel works 
at Cleveland, Ohio. A large electro magnet is used, 
suspended from a crane to pick up steel bars and bil- 
lets. It will pick up 800 pounds and drop its burden 



THE FUTURE OF LABOR. 128 

To be able to do only those things which 
a machine can do, is to be forever at the 

where wanted, by the touch of a key, the movement 
of the crane being controlled by steam. 

The Scientific American thus decribes the type-set- 
ting machine used in the New York Tribune office; 
the linotype: — 

" It is not, strictly speaking, a type-setting machine, 
but it forms type bars, each of the length, width, and 
height of a line of type, and the exact counterpart of 
that which a compositor would set up, except that 
each line is formed of one entire piece of metal, in- 
stead of as many different pieces as there are charac- 
ters, spaces, etc. The key-board in front of which 
the operator sits, has 107 keys, each marked for its 
proper characters." 

Spacing and justification are perfect and automatic, 
and uneven spacing is a physical impossibility. Each 
machine displaces two men on type-setting and saves 
distribution of type. Thirty machines and thirty men 
in the Tribune office do the work that formerly re- 
quired ninety men. 

Of the Mergenthaler machine, the Philadelphia 
Times says: — 

" It is possible for the operator to make corrections 
while forming the line, for each matrix has stamped on 
the side facing the operator, the character which it 
represents, so that he has constantly in view the mat- 
rices set up, and if he finds a mistake he can easily 
rectify it before casting the line. As to the speed of 



124 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

door of want. The outlet from the tyranny 
of pauperism in the handicrafts is to rise 

the machine, a moderately skillful operator can set by 
it from 3,500 to 4,000 ems per hour, and it is claimed 
that exceptionally expert operators have set up lines 
consisting^! thirty ems each at the rate of ten seconds 
per line, which would give 10,800 ems per hour. But 
it is not claimed that such rate of speed can be regu- 
larly and systematically sustained. Advocates of the 
Mergenthaler machine claim that it effects a saving of 
from seven to nine-tenths the cost of composition. 
This claim may be enthusiastic, but certainly the sav- 
ing is very great." 

A late Government report on mechanical education 
concludes as follows: — 

" The relative indifference of high day wages when 
brought side by side with such astonishing results, is 
more apparent yet when we deal with industries where 
automatic machinery is employed almost exclusively. 
Screw-making, nait-making, pin-making, etc. In the 
latter industry the coil of brass wire is put in its 
proper place, the end fastened, and the almost human 
piece of mechanism, with its iron fingers, does the rest 
of the work. One machine makes 180 pins a minute, 
cutting the wire, flattening the heads, sharpening the 
points, and dropping the pin in its proper place. 
108,000 pins a day is the output of one machine. A fac- 
tory, visited by me employed 70 machines. These had a 
combined output per day of 7,500,000 pins, or, 300 
pins to a paper — 25,000 papers of pins, allowing for 



THE FUTURE OF LABOR. 125 

above the plane of a machine, to do some 
skilled labor that machines cannot do. 

The 17,000,000 of people who consti- 
tute the business population of the United 
States are enabled,by superior combina- 
tion and machinery, to excuse a large 
part of the population from arts of pro- 
duction. The chief end of man, in other 
words, is not to make or obtain food 
and raiment. In the old times the total 
business population could not produce 
more material wealth than necessary for 
the consumption of those dependent upon 
it, but to-day we need fewer hunters and 
fishermen, and more men and women to 
provide amusement and recreation, in- 



stoppages and necessary time for repairs — say 20,000 
papers. These machines are tended by three men. 
A machinist with a boy helper attends to the repair- 
ing. 'It will not materially influence the price of pins 
whether the combined earnings of these five men be 
$7.50 or $10 per diem. The difiference would amount 
to one-eighth of a cent on a paper of pins. The Like- 
lihood is that when cheaper help is employed a greater 
number of hands would be employed for the samo 
work and the same output. " 



126 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

tellectual and moral education, and the 
thousand forms of spiritual wealth upon 
which the civilized man feeds.* 

The future race will want more artists, 
scientists, and teachers. All the nooks 
and corners of nature of which it is possi- 
ble for man to gain definite knowledge 
will be explored. In the wide to-morrow 
of civilization the masses will have leisure, 
greater exemption from manual pursuits, 
and a chance to earn bread and butter by 



* W. T. Harris forcibly says: — . 

** The history of industry goes back to a time when 
only one in a thousand of the able-bodied population 
could be spared for the creation of ornament or the 
ministry of culture. Great progress had been reached 
when one in a hundred could be spared for such pur- 
poses. The United States and Great Britain have 
reached the point where five in a hundred of the la- 
borers are actually pursuing vocations that have for 
their object the addition of ornament to what is al- 
ready useful, or the direct ministration to culture in 
some form. When the ratio is reversed and only five 
in a hundred are needed to provide the crude neces- 
sary articles of consumption, and the remnant of so- 
ciety may devote itself to the higher order of occupa- 
tions — then the economic problem will be solved." 



THE FUTURE OF LABOR. 127 

giving to society the service of their bet- 
ter faculties, by contributing to the spirit- 
ual wealth of the world. This does not 
mean that idleness is to reign. Habits of 
industry will always be necessary to give 
the body perfect health and the mind 
its highest training. The tendency of so- 
cial development is from narrow to gen- 
eral education. The laborer of to-day 
must have a more varied equipment than 
his forefathers had, a better education, a 
wider range. Fewer men will be needed 
from year to year in those pursuits whose 
sole object is the production of the nec- 
essaries of life, while more and more will 
be needed who can offer to the race sagac- 
ity, intelligent endeavor, and the fruits of 
culture. Society will have imposed upon 
it the duty of caring for the poor who toil 
in poverty and want, and whose capacities 
are too feeble to get on in the world. The 
energies of the lower order of workers will 
need to be directed by superintendents 
who stand at the head of the army of 
charity, perhaps under state direction. 



128 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

The emancipation of man from those 
pursuits that minister to the wants of food, 
clothing, and shelter, and his growth into 
those higher vocations which furnish in- 
tellectual wealth is a brighter picture than 
that millennium predicted by Henry 
George when " water and heat are to be 
carried through the streets at public ex- 
pense." The participation by the masses 
in higher vocations will cause a feeling of 
well-being and happiness never to be at- 
tained when they toil like work-animals 
in the tread-mill round of lower forms of 
industry. As Emerson puts it: ''These 
arts open great gates of a future, promising 
to make the world plastic and to lift hu- 
man life out of its beggary to a godlike 
ease and power." 

And so the world goes on. One inven- 
tion calls forth another and another, and 
there is no end to the explorations yet to 
be made during this three-score and ten 
years' journey of the five senses, called 
the life of man. The printing press pho- 
tographing the world at the rate of 30,000 



THE FUTURE OF LABOR. 129 

copies each hour, brings the lessons of the 
race to our breakfast tables each morning, 
and Mr. Edison's phonograph preserves 
the human voice and the characteristics 
of speech so that time and distance are 
annihilated. Then who shall set a limit 
to the realm of human vocations or draw 
a line beyond which mankind cannot go ? 
Slumbering creation is expectant, await- 
ing to be aroused by combinations of in- 
tellect, when it will give up the keys to 
new empires of endeavor, and then ed- 
ucated labor will solve the problems of 
distressed labor and Shylock will be seen 
no more. 



.CHAPTER VIII. 

INDUSTRIAL PEACE AND CO-OPERA- 
TIVE PROFIT-SHARING. 

Growth of Unions or Guilds — Laws for the 
Benefit of Laborers — Evils of Unions and 
Strikes — Co-operation Between Employer and 
Employe as a Preventivb of Strikes — Future 
Wage Workers. 

A little more than a century ago the 
laborers of England were employed under 
a species of slavery. Their wages were 
determined by their employers, and any 
attempt to combine for the purpose of de- 
manding increased pay was punished by 
confinement in the pillory, fines, and the 
loss of ears. When this slavery passed 
away workmen began to combine in 
guilds, or unions, for the purpose of main- 
taining better wages. The absolute will 
of employers was no longer the supreme 
law, for it was the mission of the guilds to 
establish a more equitable basis of wages 
(130) 



INDUSTRIAL PROFIT-PHARING. 131 

than they had before known. In time 
trades-unions spread to America, and after 
a long series of years employer and em- 
ploye alike have become accustomed to 
the simple wage system and its labor 
unions. Both manufacturer and work- 
men for a time liked the certainty of dis- 
bursements and receipts, the one knowing 
just what he would have to expend, the 
other just what he might hope to receive. 
So long as wages were established without 
undue clashing, unhindered by strikes, 
quarrels, riots and lock-outs; so long as 
employers conceded fair pay and fair 
hours, and before they combined to cut 
wages to the minimum of bare subsistence, 
the system had some features that en- 
deared it to the people. Can the system 
now be said to be satisfactory? It would 
seem not, for antagonisms have steadily 
grown, gaining in bitterness with every 
conflict, until each party suspects every 
movement of the other and attributes an 
evil motive to every action. The constant 
strikes for better pay, the " shut downs " 



132 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

that come from various causes, the ar- 
bitrary demands of both parties, and a 
thousand other incidents of the warfare, 
have destroyed the certainty of gains that 
formerly characterized the wage system. 
The search for a broader plan has resulted 
in the co-operative system of profit-shar- 
ing. This system was propounded by 
broad-minded men who would improve 
the pure wage plan, which is conducted 
with self-interest as the only motive, and 
competition as the sole regulative princi- 
ple of enterprise. 

Notwithstanding the evidence of posi- 
tive experiments there are many employ- 
ers who offer objections to co-operative 
profit-sharing. They have always as- 
sumed that they take all the risks and 
that they should have all the profits; that 
the workmen should in no manner be- 
come identified with the business, save as 
subordinates, governed by superiors; that 
any other system than the pure wage plan 
would give the workmen more or less ad- 
ministrative control. It is true that such 



INDUSTRIAL PROFIT-SHARING. 133 

a scheme gives tlie workmen more rights, 
but it gives them no voice in the business 
management. The complaint that work- 
men would have too much power is based 
on the assumption that the business is 
entirely the affair of the employer, and 
that it is beyond his province to promote 
the welfare of his men. Resolved into its 
proper elements, the principle is more 
clearly embraced in the maxim, " Every 
fellow for himself and the devil take the 
hindmost," a complete negation of the 
Golden Rule, which, while it plays no 
part in economics, cannot be forgotten in 
social science. The truth is that workmen 
are entitled to much consideration in the 
business; they are factors that cannot be 
ignored without permanent injury to the 
enterprises with which they are connected. 
It is not contended that workmen should 
have any power in the administration of 
the business, further than as regards de- 
termining, in conjunction with employers, 
their equitable share of the profits, and 
perhaps some voice as to duties and privi- 



134 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

leges. Under a carefully drawn agreement, 
based on the just rule that benefits received 
should be proportioned to efforts expended, 
there would be less uncertainty of gain, 
and less interference by either with the 
business of the other, than under the pres- 
ent belligerent and very unsatisfactory 
wage system, which often robs human 
nature of its better qualities- and widens 
the chasm between those whose interests 
are really reciprocal. The evils of the 
present plan are enumerated by Mr. Ed- 
ward L. Day, a prominent Western manu- 
facturer. He shows that employers are 
now under the direction of unions of la- 
boring men, and pools among themselves, 
and concludes with the remarkable state- 
ment that " the sole functions of employ- 
ers as producers are, to provide material 
to be worked up under rules formulated 
by the workmen and money to pay wages 
whose rate is not at all of their making." 
Under any view of the wage system it re- 
sults in more or less clashing of interests, 
for with depressions, under-consumption 



INDUSTRIAL PROFIT-SHARING. 135 

of products, and fluctuations of markets, 
there are fruitful chances for disputes. 

An objection to the profit-sharing plan, 
so senseless as hardly to deserve notice, 
and which obtains chiefly in the minds of 
persons who are prone to view the dark 
side, is that if workmen should get better 
earnings they would squander them for 
liquor and other uses of the flesh. In 
the first place the question of what use 
men will make of money that is justly 
theirs has nothing to do with the equities 
of the case, but were it a relevant objec- 
tion statistics show that drunkenness and 
immorality, also the death rate, univer- 
sally increase with the decrease of wages; 
while good pay, as a rule, induces pros- 
perity, better houses, better education, 
and a higher plane of morals. Besides, it 
is well known that wealth is the prereq- 
uisite of leisure, and leisure is a condition 
precedent to culture. No economist has 
ever advanced the diabolical theory that 
men must be starved before they will be- 
come good citizens; on the contrary, it 



136 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

has always been held that a full stomach 
must precede high moral teachings. It 
is of little use to discuss moral problems 
and reforms with men who do not know 
where their next meal is to come from. 
Philosophy and experience both confirm 
the statement that high wages, on the 
average, ameliorate the condition of those 
who toil. Assume the reverse for a mo- 
ment. If a man's wickedness increases 
with enlarged earnings, if he becomes vi- 
cious, profligate and generally worthless 
as his receipts for efforts expended become 
greater, then what term of condemnation 
will properly characterize those who an- 
nually make millions? In the light of 
such an economy the greatest philosopher 
is the man who can discover the lowest 
possible compensation on which the wage 
worker can subsist. 

But the chief principle in the system of 
co-operative profit-sharing between em- 
ployer and employe is that private prop- 
erty and private enterprise must continue, 
but with more good will and less greed. 



INDUSTRIAL PROFIT-SHARING. 137 

This distinction should be borne in mind, 
for it is the pivotal point which distin- 
guishes the laborer's demand from that of 
socialists. The socialists, even the mild- 
est, who may condemn anarchy, claim 
that the end to be reached is '* the cessa- 
tion of private property in the means of 
production, which will then be held by 
the community for the benefit of the com- 
munity." Such is the teaching of mild 
leaders — Dr. Edward Aveling and Karl 
Marx. 

A wise economy says that, while labor 
is not entitled to all the profits of indus- 
try, it is justly entitled to its equitable 
percentage of the growing wealth of the 
country. In some manner — better by 
peace than by war — this manifestly mer- 
itorious claim must eventually be recog- 
nized. The laborer must have the market 
price of labor under competition, and be- 
yond this — more than the interest of a serv- 
ant — a percentage of profit on the invest- 
ment, so that his interest and that of his 
employer may be made reciprocal. Such 



138 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

a system is co-operative profit-sharing be- 
tween employer and employe, and it re- 
dounds to the advantage of both. Under 
its workings there can be no strikes, 
riots, lock-outs, boycotts, or other indus- 
trial warfare, for labor will be in partial 
partnership with capital, and a wrong to 
one will react on the other. The pure 
wage system, as at present conducted in 
many crowded mining and factory dis- 
tricts of this country, is conducted on the 
principle that the stronger shall win. Its 
tendency is toward the final subjugation 
of the wage worker, a condition such as 
was experienced in Europe a few centu- 
ries ago, when laborers were the slaves of 
their employers. 

[What is said of co-operation applies 
largely to extensive manufactures and 
not to small concerns.] 

So long as competition between em- 
plo3^er and employe is the ** sole regula- 
tive principle, and self-interest the sole 
motive of enterprise," there can be no 
lasting peace, for such a principle ignores 



INDUSTRIAL PROFIT-SHARING. 139 

the fact that in well-adjusted relations be- 
nevolence must counterbalance self-inter- 
est. The question as between employer 
and employe is how to place the business 
on a basis of good-will and justice. Co- 
operation of some kind is the final solu- 
tion, because the only plan that creates 
"mutual interests that are operative under 
changing conditions, and self-regulating 
in action." In the operation of manufac- 
tures the cost of labor should be reckoned 
as a factor in the production "of wealth, 
and estimated for its percentage of profit. 
The scheme of profit-sharing is made 
lucid by Mr. Edward L. Day, a leading 
western manufacturer, who has made a 
careful study of the problem. His suc- 
cinct statement is submitted : — 

"The elements of the cost of articles are 
interest on capital, active and fixed, taxes, 
insurance, repairs, allowance for deterio- 
ration and renewals, and labor. Assume 
as a basis of cost the usual business inter- 
est on capital, taxes, insurance, repairs, a 
proper allowance for deterioration and re- 
newals, a proper compensation for the 



140 fHE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

services of proprietors, salaries, wages to 
unskilled workmen, and the current 
wages, at the time being, of skilled work- 
men. Each of these will compose a defi- 
nite percentage of the cost not difficult to 
ascertain. If the selling price of articles 
produced just nets this cost, there is no 
profit; if it is less, there is loss, under the 
present system sustained alone by the em- 
ployer; if it is greater there is profit, now 
unshared by the employe. If the interest 
on capital, compensation of proprietors, 
salaries, and wages were increased or de- 
creased in proportion as the selling price 
was higher or lower than cost, there would 
be practical co-operation, in which all 
would share the profit or loss in propor- 
tion to their respective contributions to 
cost." 

By consulting specimen articles of agree- 
ment which have been adopted by manu- 
facturing concerns, it is found that a fund 
is set aside from the net profits as a re- 
serve or guarantee fund, to which shall be 
charged all losses during the year. The 
surplus gained in a successful business 
would be an incentive to hard labor and 
prudence in the use of tools and materials. 



INDUSTRIAL PROFIT-SHARINa. 141 

In an unsuccessful year, the percentage 
of loss would be counterbalanced by the 
surplus saved in years of profit, and em- 
ployer and employe would together run 
the legitimate ribks of business prosperity 
or adversity, their fortunes that far being 
cast together. Mr. Day says that there is 
great economy in the use of tools and ma- 
terials, and that much is gained by abol- 
ishing watchmen and overseers, saying 
nothing of the immense gain by reason of 
the immunity from labor troubles. Mr. 
Carroll D. Wright says that under co-oper- 
ative profit-sharing "labor has received a 
more liberal share for its skill, capital has 
been better remunerated, and the moral 
tone of the whole community involved 
raised. Employment has been steadier 
and more certain. The interest of all has 
been given for the general welfare. Each 
♦man feels himself more a man. The em- 
ployer looks upon his employes in the true 
light, as associates. Conflict ceases, and 
harmony takes the place of disturbances." 
The profit-sharing plan is working with 



142 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

eminent success in some American estab- 
lishments, and it has proved to be very 
satisfactory in several well-known Euro- 
pean establishments, where the results 
have uniformly been successful. Instances 
of note are the experiment by Leclaire, a 
leading house painter ; the Paris and Or- 
leans Railway Company; the industrial 
partnership) established by M. Godin, at 
Guise, France; the experiments of Messrs. 
Briggs Brothers, at Yorkshire, England, 
and many other companies. Simple co- 
operation in production, which seeks to 
discard the wage system and employers, 
though burdened with innumerable dis- 
advantages incident to limited capital, 
and inability of the workmen to wait till 
an indefinite future for their reward, has 
met with some degree of success in Eng- 
land, though it embraces none of the great 
advantages of profit-sharing proper. In 
1882 the English Co-operative Congress at 
Derby reported a profit of 26 per cent, on an 
investment of $10,500,000, covering 1,346 
societies. The figures are certainly wortliy 



INDUSTRIAL PROFIT-SHARING. 143 

of attention. As to the outlook for the 
grander system of profit-sharing, which 
promises to be the solution of the direct 
question between employer and employe, 
nothing could be more encouraging than 
the calm conclusions expressed by Mr. 
Wright in his report of 1886. He says: 
" This system, simple in itself, humane in 
all its bearings, just in every respect to all 
the parties concerned, is the combination 
of all that is good in co-operation. This, 
the wage system and all that is good in 
compound system, is becoming a necessity. 
Under it the workman receives something 
more than has been accorded to him on 
account of the improvements in machin- 
ery; he becomes a part of the individual- 
ity of the establishment; he is lifted to a 
higher scale; his intelligence, his moral 
character, have weight in the establish- 
ment in proportion to his interest in it, 
and the whole concern has a better chance 
for prosperity, for weathering depressions, 
and for general happiness, than under 
the present wage system alone " Again 



144 THE STRUGGLE FOK BREAD. 

he says: ''It is a pleasure to be able to 
state that the proprietors of many influen- 
tial manufacturing establishments in this 
country are contemplating the organiza- 
tion of their establishment upon this basis. 
They see the success of the enterprises 
where this system has been adopted, and 
are glad to follow in so just a path." 

A system so practical, so highly en- 
dorsed and so just throughout, is worthy 
of more attention on the part of laborers 
and employers than it has heretofore re- 
ceived. It is highly encouraging to see 
that it is yearly becoming more popular, 
and that many thinkers have acknowl- 
edged that it will, in some form, be the 
final solution of the problem of peace in 
factories and mines. 



*NoTE. — George M. Powell of Philadelphia contrib- 
utes to the November (1887) Journal of Social Science 
the following interesting information: — 

"An interesting American example of profit-sharing 
is that at Peacedale, near Providence, R. I. An im- 
portant item in its success is that the proprietors have 
their own unpretentious homes among their people, 
instead of living in lordly style in some distant city. 



INDUSTRIAL PROFIT-SHARING. 145 
PART II UNIONS AGAIN. 

The army of labor, in seeking to win 
victories, often pursues war methods. It 

They have also urged and aided the members of their 
industrial family to secure homes. A free library 
has been given them by the proprietors, the Messrs. 
Hazard. The general principle of division there seems 
to be to give labor and capital each half of the profits ; 
profits being what is left after paying wages and cur- 
rent expenses and modest interest on a capital of |250,- 
000. Four hundred and fi ty persons are employed, 
and for more than a generatiou this has been known 
as a successful industrial Christiaa community. The 
proprietors belong to the Society of Friends. They 
own all the stock, and they aim at success by saving" 
of wastes more than by buying cheap and selling dear. 
They treat the bonus they pay their people as honest 
dues for care and faithful service, not as a gratuity. 
Those acquainted with this industrial family are sat- 
isfied that its financial gain, while respectable in 
amount, has not been so great through participation 
as the moral effect. The care and painstaking of labor, 
and the fraternal and pat irnal interest of proprietors 
and people in each other, have developed character, 
conscience, personal thrift, and intelligence, of far 
greater value than money. 

"Profit-sharing in the Pillsbury Flouring Mills at 
Minneapolis, Minn., is worth study. They have an 
annual output of $10,000,000 worth of flour: also 
10 



146 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

is not organized in the defensive alone, for 
many of its methods are aggressive as well. 
Organization seeking to force concessions 
means conflict, a long struggle for the re- 
dress of actual and alleged wrongs, the 
enlargement of rights and the limitation 
of duties. Incensed by long abuses, labor 
is often cruel in its warfare, and sometimes 
tyrannical and singularly blind in its de- 
mands. While its methods are often jus- 
tifiable, they are at best, necessary evils 
incident to the conflict in progress. The 



$8,000,000 more of grain elevator operations. Two 
and a half millions are required for running expenses 
and interest on capital. Average men who have been 
in their employ live years receive participatory bo- 
nuses amounting to 50 per cent, in one year, in addition 
to full average wages of that region. Those occupying 
places of special care and responsibility have received 
bonus additions to such wages of 65 per cent. * Yet 
the comp?.ny,' says Mr. Carroll D. Wright, 'con- 
sider that their plan of profit-sharing has greatly in- 
creased their own profits by the voluntary service of 
their men in times of need. By their interest in the 
business and in other ways, the evident good- will of 
their employes is regarded as the most important and 
agreeable result.' " 



INDUSTRIAL PROFIT-SHARING. 147 

unions of laboring men often do mucli in 
the way of promoting industrial education 
and keeping alive the feeling of brotherly 
love. Besides this, manv sucli oro^aniza- 
tions deprecate strikes and open warfare; 
yet a union in itself is not a guarantee that 
its members shall escape from the errors of 
human judgment, and from the disaster 
entailed by open warfare. As a result of 
bitter strifes with non-union workmen, the 
spirit of war has often been engendered to 
such an extent, among union artisans, 
that they have been relentless in their op- 
position to those who have patronized their 
enemies, — but such battles have been le- 
gitimate, if war is legitimate. Trades- 
unions regulate the price of labor so that 
individual workmen are unable to com- 
pete for places, all rates being subject to 
union scale-list. By any scale-rates there 
is a virtual corner on wages, and this 
monopoly of wages is as unyielding as 
the iron necessity that compels work- 
men, in some cities, to accept the rates 
dictated by pools of employers. At best 



148 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

tlie union dictates, and since it is com- 
posed of fallible beings, its dictation may 
often be absurdly unjust. The employer 
is frequently delayed by useless restric- 
tions and unwarranted interferences in his 
business; when there is a clashing of 
interests, the combatants measure arms, 
and the employer is threatened with war; 
should he grow weary of the union and 
hire non-union men, they are frequently 
locked out, or perhaps hindered by force 
from going to work ; should the employer 
desire to rid his business of an incompe- 
tent man, he is, if that man chances to be 
a Knight of Labor, sometimes defied and 
despised by all the unions and Knights of 
Labor assemblies in the district, and should 
he refuse to submit to the arrangements 
made by delegated committees, his goods 
are often boycotted and publicly con- 
demned. These are some of the extremes 
into which labor has frequently blundered. 
In time the workmen thus begin to re- 
gard those who hire them as their worst 
enemies, and the chasm between the two 



INDUSTRIAL PROFIT-SHARING. 149 

classes is made wider, until both parties 
become bitter and uncompromising, for- 
getting, apparently, that an injury to one 
is, in the end, an injury to the other, and 
to society at large. Thus, notwithstanding 
the many advantages of unions, they are 
not free from patent evils. 

As a correlative of trades-unions, capi- 
talists and employers combine to modify 
the wages paid to workmen. Finally they 
become aggressive, dictating and enforc- 
ing such wage-lists as they deem proper. 
They claim the absolute right to name the 
wages, gauge the working hours, and se- 
lect the persons who shall do their work. 
They seek to prohibit unions of working- 
men, and they peremptorily discharge ag- 
itators. Organized in this manner, having 
felt the evils of union mandates, and still 
retaining feelings of hatred for those who 
may have injured them, they often accu- 
mulate vast fortunes, and yet, during the 
most prosperous eras, deny to their work- 
men even the smallest advance in wages. 
In a state of peace, with a flourishing busi- 



150 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

ness and good-will between employer and 
employe, the proceedings of both parties 
would be dictatorial. But this is not an 
era of industrial harmony, and the meth- 
ods of peace cannot be expected to pre- 
vail. Undeniably there is war, and there 
is a steadily growing feeling of discontent 
with present conditions. The daily pa- 
pers contain accounts of frequent conflicts, 
where police and military forces are al- 
most powerless to prevent great disaster to 
life and property, while a few memorable 
strikes have been the great news items of 
the day. There is hope and prophecy in 
W. D. Howell's reference to the conflict, in 
** Annie Kilburn." He says: — 

"The lines are drawn harder and faster 
between the rich and the poor, and on 
either side the forces are embattled. The 
workingmen are combined in vast organ- 
izations to withstand the strength of the 
capitalists, and these are taking the lesson 
and uniting in trusts. The smaller in- 
dustries are gone, and the smaller com- 
merce is being devoured by the larger. 



INDUSTRIAL PROFIT-SHARING. 151 

. Yet in the labor organizations, which 
have their bad side, their weak side, 
through which the forces of hell enter, I 
see evidence of the fact that the poor have 
at last had pity on the poor, and will no 
more betray and underbid and desert one 
another, but will stand and pull together 
as brothers; and the monopolies,, though 
they are founded upon ruin, though they 
know no pity and no relenting, have a 
final significance which we must not lose 
sight of. They prophesy the end of com- 
petition; the}^ eliminate one element of 
strife, of rivalry, of warfare." 



APPENDIX. 



The following pages contain valuable 
information in the form of data, tables, and 
extracts from eminent writers' works: — 

THE MODERN SLAVERY. 

The following words on the railway 
slavery are from the pen of Hon. George 
W. Julian, in the March, 1883, North 
American Review : — 

"Slavery, indeed, has been abolished, 
at least so far as legislation could take 
away the power of the master; but the 
freedmen have not yet been emancipated 
from the thraldom imposed by property 
and intelligence upon the helplessness of 
poverty and ignorance. The spirit of 
aristocracy has not been ' purged out of 
the community ' in either section of the 
Union, but has simply taken refuge in 
other forms, and is still putting forth the 
full measure of its evil power. While the 
chattel slavery of the Southern negro is 

(153) 



154 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

at an end, the animating principle of the 
old slave-masters still finds manifold ex 
pression. It reveals itself in industrial 
servitude, which borrows its life from the 
alliance of concentrated capital with labor- 
saving machinery. Its maxim is, that 
the chief end of government is the pro- 
tection of property, which is easily trans- 
lated into the kindred maxim, that capital 
should own labor. Its tap-root is pure 
cupidity, and, if left to itself, it degenerates 
into a system of organized rapacity, with 
conscience and humanity turned adrift. 
Commercial feudalism is another form of 
aristocratic rule. It wields its power 
tlirough the machinery of great corpora- 
tions, which are practically endowed with 
life offices and the right of hereditary 
succession.' They control the makers and 
expounders of our laws, and are steadily 
advancing along their chosen line of 
march toward absolute supremacy." 



APPENDIX. 



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156 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

LANDMARKS IN THE RAILWAY FIGHT. 

The following are some landmarks in 
the railway movement: — 

I. — The Legislative Committee that in- 
vestigated the management of the Erie 
Railroad in 1873, concluded its report as 
follows : — 

'' It is not reasonable to suppose that the 
Erie Railway has been alone in the corrupt 
use of money for the purposes named; 
but the sudden revolution in the direction 
of this company has laid bare a chapter 
in tlie recent history of railway manage- 
ment such as has not been permitted liere- 
tofore. It exposes the reckless and prodi- 
gal use of money, wTung from the people 
to purchase the election of the people's 
representatives and to bribe them w^hen in 
office. According to Mr. Gould, his opera- 
tions extended into four different states. 
It was the custom to contribute money to 
influence both nominations and elections." 

II. — The third semi-annual report of the 
Railway Commissioners of Georgia, dated 
May 1, 1881, says:— 



APPENDIX. 157 

" The moral and social consequences of 
these railway corruptions are even worse 
than the political ; tlie}^ are simply appall- 
ing. We contemplate them with anxiety 
and dismay. The demoralization is worse 
than that of war, because fraud is meaner 
than force, and trickery meaner than 
violence. Aside from their own corrup- 
tions, the operators aim directly at the 
corru])tion of the press and the govern- 
ment." 

III. — Speaking, in October, 188G, of the 
tyranny of Pennsylvania railway cor- 
porations, and of their combinations to 
run up the price of coal, Governor Patti- 
son said : — 

"It extorts from the profits of shipment 
all that the traffic will bear, and often more 
than it will bear, doing this without a 
reasonable regard to the cost of service or 
the right of shippers. It causes violent 
fluctuations in prices, making all trade 
dependent upon its movements, and hold- 
ing a perpetual menace over the material 
interests of the country. Against such 
combinations the individual is helpless." 



158 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

IV. — Governor Lee, of Virginia, in ad- 
dressing the people, said : — 

" Combat great money corporations that 
seek to control your Legislatures, federal 
and state, by bribery and corruption. 
. . . Draw the fangs from the money 
kings. . . . Organize against capi- 
talists who furnish money to carry elec- 
tions, and then claim as their reward the 
selection of the rulers." 

V. — Hon. M. K. Turner, of Nebraska^ 
in addressing the people, said : — 

" With no straining of the eyes we see 
men who run for office in this state in the 
interest and at the bidding of railroads ; 
and officials elected by votes of tlie peo- 
ple, who come and go, who talk and vote 
at the dictation of the political attorneys 
of the railroad companies." 

VI. — A clear writer in a Western daily 
says : — 

"Mr. Croffiit, in his recent sketch of the 
Vanderbilt family, a sketch written for 
the purpose of belauding the Commodore 



APPENDIX. 159 

and his progeny, says that among the 
principles of the elder Vanderbilt were 
these : To water stock and increase divi- 
dends. He relates with great glee how 
the old hero and his friend, Tobin, put up 
a game on the Legislature and made sev- 
eral millions out of a conspiracy." 
VII. — The Irish World says: — 

"It is well known that, here in New 
York and in other states, the railways act 
on the principle of extorting from the 
shippers of goods the uttermost penny 
that can be wrung from them. It is not 
improbable that if the companies con- 
tinue in this robbery, public opinion will, 
in the end, compel the states to take the 
railroads under their control." 

VIII. — An unknown correspondent re- 
cently sent me the following estimate, 
which is worth studying: — 

" Live hogs before fattening are shipped 
in lots of 100 to 130 head per car, and af- 
ter fattening, in lots of 60 to 100 per car, 
according to weight and condition. 

"If a car-load of 130 hogs were shipped 
across the continent, they would not 



160 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

charge more than $600 for the car, whicli 
would amount to about |4.62 for each 
hog. The companies are charging from 
|150 to $600 per car for transcontinental 
freight. It costs them no more to 'pull a 
car-load of hogs than any other kind of 
freight. If 130 hogs were taken for $150, 
it would cost for each hog only $1.16 for a 
trip. Now, counting the cost of a passen- 
ger coach at $5,000, the interest at six per 
cent, for one seat for one day would amount 
to one and one-third cents; at a cost of 
$10,000, the interest would be two and 
two-thirds cents; at $20,000, the interest 
would be for one seat one day five and 
one-third cents, and for seven days, or the 
trip across the continent, thirty-seven and 
one-third cents. It would cost as much 
or more than that to handle each hog. 
The hog is only charged $1.16 for cross- 
ing this great American continent, while 
the passenger is charged $151.50. From 
this it would seem that the hog is a fa- 
vored and superior being. 

" How long are the passengers going to 
pay 130 times the price of a hog's passage, 
when they know that two passengers can 
be hauled for what it costs to haul and 
handle one hog." 



APPENDIX. 161 

IX. — The railway really originated in 
England, where it has, all things consid- 
ered, reached the most formidable propor- 
tions as an institution. In 1845 the Glad- 
stone Act proposed that the state should 
purchase the roads, but that idea was 
abandoned, and the question in England 
has really reached a state of quiescence, 
and a few great companies control the 
monopoly of the railway business. The 
Belgian Government own 60 per cent, of 
tlie railroads there, and private enterprise 
owns and controls the remaining 40 per 
cent. The one is a wholesome check to 
the other, and competition has fair play. 
France was very slow in the development 
of railways, and not until 1837 — when 
English and American trunk lines were 
really planned and started — did France 
take any movement towards organizing 
roads. The matter is undertaken in 
France by private companies, which are 
limited to districts, in which each com- 
pany is supreme and free from competing 

lines, but the government arranges tariffs, 
11 



162 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

time-tables, etc. There are six or seven 
large railway districts. In Germany the 
theory of bureaucracy prevails. The Ger- 
mans approach the problem in a cool and 
scientific manner. Nearly all the roads 
are private companies, subsidized by the 
state, or else the state is a heavy share- 
holder in the roads. At any rate the om- 
nipotent hand of government in Germany 
regulates everything about the roads, from 
the freight and passenger rates, down to 
the provision for safety. It is said that 
the English-speaking races have favored 
the idea of private control, while the con- 
tinental nations, whose governments are 
peculiarly strong in the executive depart- 
ments, favor the state control idea. Our 
English-speaking nations are stronger in 
the parliamentary or legislative branches, 
and commissions or bureaucratic control 
have not been favored. The emancipa- 
tion of the track, as I advocate, combines 
the best points of both the continental 
and the English or American system. 
X. — The reader should clearly under- 



APPENDIX. 163 

stand that state ownership of the railway 
tracks would involve the employment of 
comparatively few officers. For instance, 
the total number of men engaged in rail- 
way service (exclusive of clerks and book- 
keepers, agents, etc., of passenger and 
freight departments) in 1880, was 236,058, 
and out of this comparatively small num- 
ber many must be excluded, for, as there 
were 29,000 locomotives, at least 75,000 
of this 236,058 must have been engaged as 
firemen and engineers. Then there were 
many thousand employed as brakemen 
and conductors. There are now 125,000 
miles of railway in the United States. I 
estimate that the track furnishes employ- 
ment to less than one man per mile, so 
that for all the states and territories the 
tracks would, after all, not employ any 
considerable number of men. The reader 
can readily reason the problem out for 
himself and quickly see that the state 
ownership of the roadbed would not per- 
petuate corruption in power. The posi- 
tion of section-hand is not so enticing. 



164 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

Again, state ownership does not mean 
that all men will go into the railway busi- 
ness. No more than a practical number 
would go into that calling. The baker, 
the printer, would not desert the old call- 
ing. 

ENORMOUS EARNINGS. 

The following is from the report of the 
Committee of Transportation of the Amer- 
ican Economic Association: — 

The enormous rate at which railroad 
traffic has increased may be seen from the 
following table, taken from Nimmo's Re- 
port on Internal Commerce of the United 
States, for 1884:— 



APPENDIX. 



165 



Total number of tons (of 2,000 pounds) transported 
upon the New York state canals, the New York Cen- 
tral and Hudson River Railroad, the New York, Lake 
Erie and Western Railroad, and the Pennsylvania 
Railroad, each year from 1868 to 1883, inclusive. 



Year. 



New York 
State canals* 



New York 
Central and 
Hudson Riv- 
er Railroad.'' 



New York 

Lake Erie 

and Western 

Railroad.* 



Pennsylva- 
nia Railroad 
Division.! 



1868.. 

1869.. 

1870.. 

1871.. 

1872.. 

1873.. 

1874.. 

1875.. 

1876.. 

1877.., 

1878... 

1879.., 

1880... 

1881... 

1882... 

1883... 



TONS. 

6,442,225 
5,859,080 
6,173,769 
6,467,888 
6,673,370 
6,364,782 
5,804,588 
4,859,858 
4,172,129 
4,955,963 
5,171,320 
5,362,372 
6,457,656 
5,179,192 
5,467,423 
5,664,056 



TONS. 

1,846,599 

2,281,885 

4,122,000 

4,532,056 

4,393,965 

5,522,724 

6,114,678 

6,001,954 

6,803,680 

6,351,356 

7,695,413 

9,015,753 

10,533,038 

11,591,379 

11,330,393 

10.892,440 



TONS. 

3,908,243 
4,312,209 
4,852,505 
4,844,208 
5,564,274 
6,312,702 
6,364,276 
6,239,946 
5,972,818 
6,182,451 
6,150,568 
8,212,641 
8,715,892 
11,086,823 
11,895,238 
13,610,623 



TONS. 

4,722,015 

5,402,991 

5,804,051 

7,100,294 

8,459,535 

9,211,231 

8,626,946 

9,115,368 

9,922,911 

9,738,295 

10,946,752 

13,684,041 

15,364,788 

18,229,365 

20,360,399 

21,674,160 



*From annual report of Auditor of Canal Department, State 
of New York. 

fFrom annual reports of Pennsylvania Railroad Company. 



From this table it appears that the ton- 
nage transported on the New York Cen- 
tral and Hudson River Railroad increased 
from 1,846,599 tons in 1868 to 10,892,440 



166 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

tons in 1883; that the tonnage transported 
on the New York, Lake Erie, and Western 
Railroad increased from 3,908,243 tons in 
1868 to 13,610,623 tons in 1883; and that 
the tonnage transported on the Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad increased from 4,722,015 
tons in 1868 to 21,674,160 tons in 1883. 
The total tonnage transported by rail on 
these three roads increased from 10,476,- 
857 tons in 1868 to 46,177,223 tons in 1883. 
The growing importance of the railway 
as compared with the canal under our 
present system is very evident from the 
above table. Much of this traffic was 
" through traffic," i. e., traffic which went 
from the West to the East, while a much 
larger proportion of it was interstate traf- 
fic, i. e., traffic which crossed at least one 
state line. It appears, from the reports of 
New York state officials, that the traffic on 
the Erie canal increased from 4,729,654 
tons in 1865 to 5,009,488 in 1884; while 
the traffic on the railroads competing with 
it ran in the same time from 3,609,640 to 
22,123,895 tons. 



APPENDIX. 167 

THE TRUST EVIL. 

In speaking of Trusts, William W. Cook 
of the New York bar, says: — 

The American people have become 
alarmed at the growth of "Trusts." The 
Standard Oil Trust and the American 
Cotton Oil Trust have sown their seed in 
a fertile soil, and the rank growth is to- 
day polluting the air and stifling the ex- 
istence of healthy life and progress. It is 
currently reported and believed that the 
''Trust" monopolies have drawn within 
their grasp not only kerosene-oil and cot- 
ton-seed oil, but sugar, oatmeal, starch, 
white corn-meal, straw paper, pearled bar- 
ley, coal, straw board, castor-oil, linseed- 
oil, lard, school slate, oilcloth, salt, cattle, 
gas, street railways, whisky, rubber, steel, 
gteel rails, steel and iron beams, nails, 
wrought-iron pipes, iron nuts, stoves, lead, 
copper, envelopes, paper bags, paving 
pitch, cordage, coke, reaping and binding 
and mowing machines, threshing ma- 
chines, ploughs, glass, and water works. 



168 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

And the list is growing day by day. Mill- 
ions of dollars in cash or property, are be- 
ing drawn into the vortex.* 

The fabulous profits which flow from an 
absolute ''Trust" have dazzled the minds 
and set on fire the imagination of men. 
Manufacturers are rushing into the mael- 
strom. They are staking their fortunes 
on the venture, and, in their dreams of 
the future they see a rich and golden 
stream of wealth rewarding their daring 
plans. 

They reason well and ably. Cheaper 
production is to result; multitudes of of- 
ficers are to be dispensed with ; superin- 
tendents, traveling salesmen, and expens- 
ive advertisements are to be diminished ; 
raw material is to be purchased more 
cheaply ; the highest order of administra- 



* "The anthracite coal combination of Pennsylvania, 
one of the most remarkable monopolies in the United 
States, comprises six railways, which own 195,000 
acres of anthracite coal land out of a total of 270,000 
acres."' — Richard T. Ely, in Harper^ s Magazine, July, 
1886, p. 255. 



APPENDIX. 



169 



tive ability is to be procured; inventions 
are to be encouraged and used ; overpro- 
duction is to be prevented ; permanency 
of employment is to be ensured ; more cer- 
tain returns on capital are to be guaran- 
teed; insolvencies, resulting from compe- 
tition, are to disappear; production on a 
large scale is to decrease the cost thereof; 
large and new enterprises, requiring great 
capital, great risk, and great powers of 
administration are to be undertaken ; and 
finally, they argue within the secrecy of 
their conclave that the public is at their 
mercy, and that prices may be advanced. 
Silently, rapidly, and successfully their 
schemes are being consummated. No 
shock from the outer world has disturb( d 
the progress of their plans. 

EVOLUTION OF VOCATIONS. 

Dr. W. T. Harris furnishes the following 
table of industries, showing the growth of 
vocations. His "Right of Property and 
Ownership of Land " is a pamphlet that 
every student should possess. 



170 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

I. Tlte Lower Order — The Production of 
Necessities. 

1. Procuring raw materials, 
(a) Agriculture and grazing. 
(6) Hunting, fishing. 

(c) Mining (including petroleum 
wells, etc.). 

2. Transportation, 
(a) Teaming. 
{h) Railroad. 

(c) Water transportation. 

3. Transformation of Products. 

(a) Textile fabrics, cloth and cloth- 
ing. 
(h) Wood and metal work. 

(c) Leather. 

(d) Miscellaneous. 

II. 1 he Higher Order — Production of Means 
of Luxury, of Protection, and of Culture. 
The vocations that provide. 

1. Means of luxury and creature-com- 
fort, including manufactures that require 
a higher order of educated, technical skill. 

2. Means of protection, including 

(a) Those who provide amusement 

and recreation. 
(6) The medical profession, 
(c) The legal profession. 



APPENDIX. 171 

(c^) Officials managing public works 
or public charities, also government 
officials. 

(e) Insurance companies and the di- 
rective agents of companies formed 
for guarding the interests, general 
or special, of society as a whole or of 
any particular part of it — charitable 
associations, trade unions, etc., etc. 
3. Instrumentalities of Culture. 

(a) Moral and religious — churches, 
etc. 

{h) Intellectual and moral education 
— schools and libraries. 

(c) Aesthetic — including all trades 
that produce ornament on useful 
goods or that produce works of art 
in sculpture^ painting, music, po- 
etry, and literary art, landscape 
gardening etc., etc. — also all inffii- 
ences that cultivate taste, — the for- 
mation and care of art museums, 
etc. 

{d) The collection and diffusion of 
information, editing and printing of 
books and newspapers, telegraph 
operators, etc., etc. 

(e) Pursuit of science and the inven- 
tion of devices useful in the arts. 



172 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

ADVANTAGES OF THE ERA. 

From Simon N. Patten's essay on the 
consumption of wealth, the following is 
taken: — 

"By the changes in consumption which 
modern progress has made possible, tKe 
welfare of society has been improved in 
two important respects. Through a great 
reduction in cost, many more articles than 
formerly have a low ratio of cost to utility, 
and thus the inducement to labor has been 
greatly increased. In the second place, 
the greater variety of our wants allows 
them to be supi^lied with a smaller pro- 
portional labor. For a people with few 
wants, all their land must be used to sup- 
ply these wants, even though most of it is 
better .fitted for C'ther uses; while, with 
every increase in the variety of our wants, 
all the qualities of each soil and climate 
can be better utilized. Were the actions 
of men controlled only by the laws of hu- 
man nature and those of the external 
world, our present economic condition 



APPENDIX. 173 

would be greatly improved. We have in- 
herited a world much better fitted for 
supplying our wants than that possessed 
by our ancestors; but along with this bet- 
ter economic world have also been in- 
liOTted laws, habits, and prejudices, suited 
only to the artificial surroundings of our 
ancestors. Only when our prejudices have 
been removed, and our laws and habits 
modified so as to harmonize with our pres- 
ent environment, can we hope to utilize 
all our resources and to have all that va- 
riety in our consumption wliich a better 
conformity to natural laws will permit. 
We do not need a new world or a new 
man; but we do need a new society and a 
state whose power will be superior to that 
of any combination of selfish individuals, 
and whose duties will be commensurate 
with human wants. 

The following is from the pen of Mr. 
Charles W. Thomas, a well-known lawyer 
and student at Woodland, California: 
" The ' workingman ' as presented in liter- 
ature is an assemblage of possibilities and 



174 THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

incoherencies. As such, no general idea is 
or can be true about him. In fact he be- 
longs to no political party, being moved 
always in that line by self interest. Much 
of the literature on the subject of the 
Svorkingman' is nothing but fertilized 
fancy of diseased imagination. Every 
class of persons has its degrees and orders. 
" There is a material difference between 
the tiller of the soil and the worker of the 
material. Generally speaking, the farmer 
is his own master, laborer, and the recipi- 
ent of the products of his toil. He is far 
removed from the centers of politic£\l 
power and partisan corruption. He is 
more of the freeman and less of the slave, 
and therefore his condition in life and his 
relation to political institutions make it 
possible for him to become the forgotten 
man. On the other hand, the great cities 
are the radiating centers of journalism, of 
education, of culture, and of commercial 
enterprise; which, for good or bad, mould 
the institutions of our country; and so near 
them lives the ' workingman ' of a hand- 



APPENDIX. 175 

icraft, that he cannot distinguish their 
trend for good or evil; nor can he recog- 
nize the need of political discipline to at- 
tain to a contented citizenship. He is 
moved toward that party which promises 
relief from real or imaginary wrongs. 
He sees no difference between statesman- 
ship and partisanship. 

" Economists give too much attention to 
the abstract idea of capital and labor and 
too little to the capitalist and the laborer; 
they devote too much time to the discus- 
sion of the assumed principles, and too 
little to the discussion of the personality^ 
of capital and labor. In the solution of 
this mixed social and political problem, 
the tendency is to regard capital and la- 
bor as inanimate elements and factors. 
There is more in capital than mere ' bar- 
ren metal, ' and more in labor than mere 
muscle. There is such a thing as the in- 
telligence of capital ; and there is such a 
thing as the intelligence of labor. Edu- 
cation on the line of contact is what is 
needed. The danger of disagreement is 



17G THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. 

nominal so long as the relation of the 
capitalist and laborer is direct and per- 
sonal. The greatest and most dangerous 
conflict comes when the capitalist is ' seven 
times removed/ and the strained relation- 
ship of master and servant is established 
between the servant under servant of 
the one master — the capitalist. " 



ALPHABETICAL INDEX. 



Page. 

Abbott's, Lyman, Position 97 

Agriculturists, Number of 52 

Adams, C. F., on Railroads 54 

Advertisements for Places 17 

Advantages of the Era . 172 

Beef Cattle, Grovi^th of 91 

Brougham on Poverty 18 

Business Population of U. S 155 

Clare's, Sister Frances, Ideas 81 

Control of Railroads 70 

CoRTHEL on Freights 52 

Co-operative Associations 43 

Cheney, E. P., on Capitalists 33 

Combinations, Evils of 29 

Complaints, Cause of 15 

Complaints of the People 9 

Civilization, Changes Made by 12 

Combination Destroys Competition 108 

Culture Frees Man 116 

Capital's Arbitrary Claims 32, 33 

Competition among Railroads 63 

Discriminations of Railways 62 

Dexter on Co-operative Societies 43 

Distribution of Wealth 34, 35, 36, 37 

Denison on Property Rights 10 

J 2 (177) 



178 INDEX. 

Discoveries of the Future 128, 9 

Day, Edward L., on Profits 139, 141 

Earnings of the People 88 

Ely, R. T., on Co-operative Associations 43 

English Hard Times 19 

Era, Problems of the 9, 10 

Economy, Motto of Private 11 

Expenditures Enlarged 15 

Early Vocations 118 

Education for New Pursuits. . . 121, 7 

Employers, Stubborn 132 

Equitable Share of Profits 137 

Employers against Unions 148, 9 

Fertility of Soil 91 

Farms, Value of 83, 84 

Farmers' Low Earnings 63 

Freight Receipts Increased 70 

Future Race, Demands of . . . 126 

Freight Rates 47, 8, 9, 50 

Freights Suddenly Increased 50 

Farmers, How Robbed 50 

Farmers, Vast Number of 51, 52 

Feudalism, the Modern 46 

Factories, Number Idle 22 

Fortunes, Growth of 13 

Generalizations, Value of 20 

George's Ideas 74, 5, 0, 7, etc. 

Giffin on Wages 42 

Government, Socialism of 103 

Harris on Henry George 82, 91, 2, 3, 4, etc. 

Houses, Value of in U. S 83 

Highways, History of 58 



INDEX. 179 

Hudson on Feudalism 4^ 

Harris, W. T., on Price-levels 40, 41 

Howells, W. D. , on the Poor 15 

Hard Times, Ficts about 16 

Higher Vocations 128 

Howells, W. D., on Labor 150 

Harris, W. T., on Trades 169, 70, 71 

Illinois, Wages in 45 

Income Taxes 33 39 

Ingersoll on the Labor Question .23, 24 

Industrial Depressions 12, 13 

Kenmare, the Nun of 81 

Kingsbury on Workingmen 11 

Lands First Occupied 91 

Law of the Highway 5, 7, 58, 60, 61 

Labor, Wages of 45 

Labor, the Examine)- Bureau of 17, 18 

Lockouts that Fail 20, 21 

Labor, Divisions of 14, 119, 120 

Labor in the Future 116 

Labor, its War Methods 145, 6 

' Labor's! Blunders , 148 

Malthcjsian Theory .91 , 92 

Marx and Henry George 38, 74 

MuLHALL on Land Values 84 

Mallock on Henry George - 89, 90 

Manhattan Island's Value 90 

Machinery's Work 44 

Machinery, Horse-power of 45 

Mulhall on Incomes 39, 40 

Machinery Employs More People 41, 42 

Monopoly's Evils 25 



180 INDEX. 

Machinery Cheapens Products 27 

Markets Cornered 28 

Machinery, Eflects of 117 

Macauley on the Poor 19 

Machinery, Conipetition of . . 121 

Magnets that Do Work 122 

Monopolies, G. W. Julian on 153, 4 

Nationallsm, Growth of 9, 10 

Necessaries, Prices of 40 

New York, Labor in 18 

Overcapitalized Railroads 66 

Old Times and New 11 

Paupers, Number of 91 

Population, Increase of 92 

Property, the Fuaction of 93, 94 

Production of the U. S : 100 

Property Values in the U. S 82 

Pennsylvania, Railroads in 62 

Products, Increased Use of 42, 3 

Pickard on New Education 44 

Paupers in New York ; 38 

Poor Growing Poorer, etc 38 

Price-levels, Value of 40, 41 

Products, Cornering of 28 

Pattison, Governor, on Pools 30, 31 

People Idle in 1885 22 

Problems for Solution 8 

Profit-sharing 130 

Poor, Society to Care for 127 

Population, Number Who Work 126 

Pins, Manufacture of 124 

Profit-sharing Agreements ... 134 



INDEX. 181 

Profit-sharing, Examples of ... 145, 6 

Profit-sharing Analj'zed 139, 142 

Powell on Profit-sharing 144 

Poor on Watered Stock 66 

Reed's, Homer, Ideas 80 

Ratio of Land Values 84, 87 

Rent, Amount of 84, 85 

Rent, Per Capita of . 85, 86 

Railways, Overcapitalized 66 

Robbery by Railroads 71 

liailway Mottoes 47 

Railway Problem Defined 47, 56 

Railway, the Real Problem 49 

Rogers on Wages 26, 27 

Russian Communism 107 

Railway Companies Fewer 108 

Remedy against Machinery 122 

Railway Data 156, 166 

Socialism, History of ....... 104 

Spencer on Socialism 105 

Socialism 96 

Socialism Defined : 99 

Spencer Abandons Land Ideas 75 

Stations with Competing Lines 64 

Sovereign Ownership of ihe Track 65 

Steam Engines, Number in Use 45 

Speech, Excesses of 24 

Strikes, Number of 20 

Statistics, the Story of 16 

Socialists, Demands of 137 

Self-interest 138 

Speech, the Freedom of 7 



182 INDEX. 

Thomas, C. W., his Ideas 173, 4, 5 

Trusts 108 to 115 

Train-dispatcher's Testimony 68, 9 

Traffic, How Charged 47 

Transportation, Reduced Cost of : 48 

Train Load, Increase of 52, 53 

Trusts, Evils of 32, 107, 168 

Trades, Evolution of 118 

Type-setting Machines 123 

Trusts, Law Against 107, 8 

Trusts, a Sample Agreement 1 14 

Unions, Growth of 131 

Unions, Evils and Benefits of 147 

Unions, Tyranny of 147 

Vocations, Evolution of 169, 70, 71 

Village Community 106, 107 

Wages, Harris on, . . 102 

Wages, Increase of 40, 42 

Women, New Work for 119 

Wright, Carroll D., on Labor 21 

Workingmen, Kingsbury's Ideas of 11 

Wealth, Increase of 25, 26 

Wall Street's Earnings 26 

Wealth, Three Ways to Gain It 27 

Wool, Increase of 91 

Woolsey on Socialism 98 

Workmen, Their Hatred of Machines 122 

Woikmen, Fewer Manual 125 

Workmen, Too Much Power of 133 

Wages, Their Effect on Morals. , 135 

Wright on Profit-sharing 141, 143 

'Workingmen in Literature 173, 4, 5 



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